For the past several months, I have let my vegetable garden go wild. The result has been a jungle of weeds and plants sending up tall shoots, going to seed. The other day, I traversed wet grass to the far corner of our yard to pay the vegetable garden a visit and was shocked to discover that even in the midst of this growing chaos, there was still bounty to be collected – a bouquet of purple broccoli, a few stray, slow-growing beets, and even a head of lettuce that somehow miraculously avoided the frost. It was heartening to see that things find a way to keep growing despite neglect or absence. If this can happen in the garden, I tell myself, it can also happen in the studio. And that makes my creative heart more at ease. Life these days has pulled me in many directions away from the studio – both the physical space of making art, and even the mental space of dreaming new work. I like to think that when I do return to the studio, some creative seeds planted in the past will have germinated and perhaps even grown into fully formed ideas – surprising and delighting me with their beauty and possibility.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Benign Neglect
For the past several months, I have let my vegetable garden go wild. The result has been a jungle of weeds and plants sending up tall shoots, going to seed. The other day, I traversed wet grass to the far corner of our yard to pay the vegetable garden a visit and was shocked to discover that even in the midst of this growing chaos, there was still bounty to be collected – a bouquet of purple broccoli, a few stray, slow-growing beets, and even a head of lettuce that somehow miraculously avoided the frost. It was heartening to see that things find a way to keep growing despite neglect or absence. If this can happen in the garden, I tell myself, it can also happen in the studio. And that makes my creative heart more at ease. Life these days has pulled me in many directions away from the studio – both the physical space of making art, and even the mental space of dreaming new work. I like to think that when I do return to the studio, some creative seeds planted in the past will have germinated and perhaps even grown into fully formed ideas – surprising and delighting me with their beauty and possibility.
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1 comment:
Beautiful analogy! Thank you for this! As a budding artist with garden in disarray, i find that my desire to create my art, also corresponds to my desire to attend to my garden as well as other "neglected" aspects of my life. Thank you for sharing!
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