tend
This series is entitled “tend” in part for the gardening and cultivating imagery it brings to mind. To tend the land is to care for it, to cause life in it to grow and flourish, to protect it, to listen to it and to serve it. But I am also interested in how this word appears in words like attention and tender. This series circles around themes of attention and affection as groundwork for a kind of sensitive care for a place. They have grown out of a practice of attention to the present moment: light, space, color, and texture in the natural and cultivated world. They are deeply grounded in season and place — specifically the midwestern landscape. As a child of the Midwest, these pieces are also a tender care for home. They are an interest in the small wonders of a winter afternoon, in the whispered miracle of a radish sprout, in the irreplaceable scream of the late summer cicada. They are a call to the particular, the irreducible, irreplaceable, tenacious and tender of this place.
Each piece is its own, and speaks in its own way. And yet as I consider them together I would like to imagine them being in a space together in a gallery exhibit in perhaps the next year or so. In light of that, I will be sharing some of the works in progress here and other places, however they will not be for sale just yet. If one sparks your curiosity or interest please feel free to reach out to me to inquire about it for purchase next autumn or winter.
Cabbage White
Early August: the midwest
In my front yard two young girls are catching cabbage white moths in a butterflying net. Sweaty and with focus attention above their head they are two butterflies themselves, heedless of other people’s front yards or the sidewalks or “private property”. They do not notice or care that they are running through my front yard, and neither do I. I am glad to see them. My housemates and I sit at our picnic table and watch them watch the butterflies on a Sunday afternoon.
…
We wonder will the hot days end? Perhaps this is the hottest summer we have had in years. Even when the rain comes it brings only more tangible pressure in the humid air. I avoid turning on the oven. Why heat up the house? But sometimes the sun’s direct attention is exactly what I want and I close my eyes and take it in. I can feel it on my very eyelids.
…
When I go for a walk in my neighborhood see the first Queen Ann’s Lace. I know this is only the beginning. Soon the fields alongside the railroad tracks will be white with lace.
Midwest, Late June
Late June
The first truly hot days—and yet long evenings are cool and mornings hold the coolness suspended in humid air. Colors seem to shout and then are muffled by the thick atmosphere. Green as far as the eye can see, and off in the distance a thunderstorm is brewing.
These are the longest evenings as the solstice approaches: the time for campfires and mosquitoes. Kitchens smell of fresh herbs and watermelon. Clovers have caught my attention this year, with their unpretending simplicity and sometimes an unexpected blush.
Late April, 2025
Violets
You appear
abundantly,
inconveniently,
taking over my vision
only for a week, or perhaps eight days.
An overflow heedless of place or propriety.
Just as suddenly
your congregation disappears.
found only in twos and threes,
as if
in reluctant conspiracy
a little jaded
by exposure
and lawn mowers.
first spring rains
Snowdrops
March 12 - 26, 2025
Snowdrops, sturdy and brave harbingers of spring
Midwinter
summer
June 2024
My tomato plants are just starting to flower, days feel long and bright, and I am treasureing the last few months with my housemates before our living arrangements shift around in late summer.
The window is open window on a young summer day with the tangible and pressing sunlight only an open window can bring. I don’t think I am the only one to experience my breath feeling trapped within me in times of stress or anxiety. And yet, even amid this, there are some blessed and bright moments which feel like opening a window–allowing breath, and light, snippets of conversation, and the smell of young tomato plants to flow freely in and out. Although it can sometimes be as fleeting as the beating of a bird's wing, it is absolutely and truly real.
spring: the garden
May 2024
It is the spring of the 17 year cicadas. The ground feels fresh, still rubbing sleep from its eyes. I find myself with a strange swelling affection for the tiny radish sprouts coming up out of the dark ground— young, tender and curiously brave. So far hope takes up the most space in this dark brown canvas of dirt and earthworms. The tenderness of it all—delicate and as old as time—presses into my eyes and spirit. So far the cicadas which come first as a curiosity and only later as a force are only half believed. Later their harsh beauty will have to be reckoned with, a hard reconciliation to make with young hope. Two kinds of wide eyed wonder this spring: one tender, the next fierce.
