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A Love of Place

I have revered communities that I am compelled to return to. Not like the swallows of Capistrano- theirs is an urgency of procreation- but places and their people that afford me a sense of community and of kinship and, if I am fortunate, also consist of a beauty, usually natural, that remains restorative long after the sojourn is over. Two such communities for me are Tucumcari, New Mexico, and the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan. The first is high plains desert, the second the forested and feral terrains embraced by the curve that is Lake Superior.

One offers a "wrap around sky", as my friend Ruth Daniel has described the high plains, and the land of Lake Superior, everything from boreal forests to bald eagles and bear. Both afford me the sense of tribe, of being part of something that is both closer to the natural world and nourishing in matters of psyche and fellowship, in ways distinct from the place where I dwell and in ways that are unique to less populated communities.

I drive long hours to reach each locale just as I did this week to reach the shores of Lake Superior, where I am now, looking out on a bright blue lake and sky and taking pleasure in 68 degrees and my companions Janice and Fred and their haven of eagles, coyote, fox; and the most pristine air imaginable. Nature and kinship and respite from the habitual "oh, my".

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A Change in Climate

There's the sort of climatic shift having to do with weather conditions and then the sort having to do with the navigating of human relations and mood, etc. We are in flux, the universe and its beings, understudies in continuous revision and incessant fine-tuning as both organisms and as a system. The fragility of protoplasm and the tenacity of it are both in evidence and the paradox wows me.

New patterns, new plants, new creatures evolve.

New arrangements in friendships, new frameworks, even new associations to old connections develop. Reorganizing ourselves with each experience and bringing to consciousness things both dormant and camouflaged is the point; or at least one point on this Moravian Star that I call my life.

Truly living is an equation for me that involves change, awareness, remaining current- and riding the currents that present themselves.

   

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Spring Forward

I'm not in love with daylight saving time, the switching forth and back of clocks just as your eye and psyche adapt to the light and hour, but I can "spring ahead" with the best of you.

In the world of metal there is much springing. A remarkable collection of elements soft, hard, malleable and more. Metal conducts, it carries, it upholds, it fastens and bridges, and even biologically sustains. Too much or too little iron in our bodies will eliminate the spring in our step. I have a love of the material and a long kinship with the workers of metal: sculptors, engineers, scrappers and inventors. I co-own, with John Daniel Walters, a business named METAL. We are a design and fabrication studio and a gallery. We produce sculptural, utilitarian, and mechanical forms using digital and traditional processes. We re-purpose and reclaim objects, and design and produce with an eye on the beauty and longevity of the object. We marry functionality and splendor, and explore the inventiveness that is our human inclination.

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