Fall Flow

 

Balloon Vine seed pod November 2023

 

Fall is my favorite time of year. It’s the reward for surviving a Mississippi summer. The respite from humidity and sweaty nights and the reward for lasting another season. Fall brings with it the thankfulness of making it through another year no matter if it was good or bad, successful or failure, feast or famine. It’s a time to reflect on the year’s accomplishments and start planning for the year to come.

The photo above is from a balloon vine. I’ve shared some pictures of this plant before HERE. You can buy seeds for this vine and it’s a fast growing hearty little plant but it also just grows wild here on the fencelines in Mississippi. When you shake the seedpods you can hear the small black seeds rattling around the dry brittle husk of the lantern shaped seed head. I know a lot of people would have passed by a brown vine lying on the ground by a fence but sometimes you have to be willing to see potential in the details. Be willing to look past typical beauty and see beauty in the atypical. Be willing to see potential where others might not. Light, texture, and color can be found anywhere if you just look hard enough. Potential can be found anywhere if you’re willing to look around for it, just a bit.

I struggle to balance my art practice with my office job and my “Momma job” constantly. Art isn’t something that you just do as a hobby, it can be, but for many of us, we know it’s just a part of life, a part of who we are. We’re happiest when we get to do something creative. It fulfills that part of ourselves that wants to create, to bring something we see in our mind to life that no one has ever seen or thought of before. Making art a lot of the time is as involuntary as breathing. When I can see a little beauty in something as mundane as a dried, dead vine on a fence row that makes me happy. The image above was taken with my phone. A quick snap as the sun went down and yet the light and the composition make me pleased.  Could I have gotten my big hulking Nikon out of the bag in my car? Sure. Did I really need to for an Instagram post? Maybe, maybe not. It’s just the fact that I got to take a neat picture and share it that made me happy, and at its core that’s all an artist wants to do. We want to make something with all the enthusiasm of a child finishing a finger painting jumping up and down and asking excitedly, "Can we put it on the fridge!?!” We want to share something that elicits a reaction.

As we go into the weekend I hope you find something that makes you happy, do something that makes you proud of yourself, and find someone to share that feeling with as well.

Happy weekend my lovelies.


October...The One That Slipped Away....

 
 

The end of September went out with one more art show in Starkville at the Cotton District Arts Festival. Honored and happy as always to be juried into a show, especially one that is so local to me. The show ran from September 18 through October 20, 2023, at the MSU Visual Arts Center and you can see the work HERE. And to be honest, after hustling to get pieces ready for two shows in a month I decided to sort of take it easy for October. Should I have been working and creating more? Sure, but Allie had her first homecoming dance (my momma heart just can’t take how cute she and her best friend were) and then Halloween and a harvest carnival at Chuch. So sometimes you gotta just roll with life. That’s how it is. 

 

Photography gets harder in the afternoons when it gets dark so quickly after work.

 

So now October has slipped through my fingers, my birthday has come and gone on the 5th (hello 42), and to add insult to injury the clocks changed the 5th as well.  Happy freaking birthday to me, just what I wanted a big dose of darkness at 4:45 in the afternoon. *pout* 

 

Trying to play with light and angles.

 


But I do have to say that fall in Mississippi while normally fleeting has been absolutely beautiful this year. The rain finally came yesterday gentle but soaking and it was just what we all needed. November in general is one of my favorite months and not because it’s my birthday month but because normally it signals a cool down from summer temps, fall colors, and that beautiful buttery golden light that you only get in the fall here.  The sunsets are absolutely spectacular and sitting outside is finally a pleasure once again. Hot coffee in the mornings and open doors in the afternoon. I just wish the light lasted a little longer, but such is life. Happy Friday friends.