GARDEN TIME

Margaret Atwood said, “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”  Few things make me happier than garden work; it is a path that leads me into nature, botany, history, friendship and back to the farm where I grew up. It was on the farm, being dependent on nature in every season, that I first began “reading” the light as an indicator of weather changes; it told us when the hay could be cut, or the grain harvested.  I have never tired of watching the light change throughout the day as it moves around our house from the front to the side, to the back, and slips down the other side.  I photographed for years in the studio controlling the light, however, now I am no longer setting up the lighting but reacting to the light nature makes.   In the recent series of garden photographs, the time of day and weather conditions, such as an incoming storm or nightfall, illuminate the stage on which the plants play out small dramas.   My early experiences with light and nature may be why I return, over and over again, to making  garden images and renewing this connection with the continual change in the natural world.

In fact, the garden as a subject threads its way through many of my photographs, starting with the still life images of the late 1970’s, the “Leslie” series of the l970’s and early 1980’s,  the photograms of the 1980’s, and the current plant-flora series made with  a digital camera.  In looking back, I see that I have often followed the path of light into the garden to explore ideas of  fecundity,  seduction, ultimate fragility, death and rebirth seen in the slow cycle of the seasons.