This morning I awoke to the raucous caw caw caw of crows.
I am in Palo Alto inspecting the site where my latest outdoor sculptures will land. I plan to install them in April - so much to do before they are ready!
Sculpture, drawing, painting, walking, fashion, collage - the list goes on and on and I’m into all of it. Creating work, building and forming something out of various materials is a driving force of my being - and maybe everybody. I remember the first time I found a bird nest - spell binding. It was formed, woven together with a tight knit mixture of a gazillion things…some soft threads of white and tan and green, all different widths, grasses of all variations, rigid little sticks, parts of plastic and paper. I had the desire to pull it apart but it was so elegantly compressed like a piece of curved felt. It was the bird’s personal story all wrapped up into a home. Unique, physical, dimensional, built to perfectly create safety, stability and connection to the nests’ precise location on this planet.
Talk about art - the art of making a bird nest should be a survival class in every elementary school. It requires total knowledge and awareness of the entire cosmology of a place. I think that as technology keeps ramping up, as we live in a global grid and people don’t seem to care / be dislocated from their physical environment - making one’s own nest will become more difficult / more vital for personal and global harmony. Today, more than any other time, in order to know ourselves and each other - I think we must not conform. Our nests, our thoughts, our lives, our art should strive for free form.