Happy Earth Day to you!

It is Earth Day today.  I like the earth, I like dirt. I like playing with mud in the form of clay. 

Earth Day has been around since 1970. It was started by Gaylord Nelson, a senator from WI. 

It was a response to a massive oil spill in California the previous year. He wanted to raise awareness of the effects crapping on our mother earth with air and water pollution.

The earth has been very good to me. In a very direct way, almost everything I make comes from the earth. I have to admit I take our Mother for granted more often then not. That is one reason why I a profoundly thankful for artists like Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

He was born Friedrich Stowasser  in Vienna in 1928, and  later changed his name to  Friedensreich Hundertwasser which means  Peace-Kingdom Hundred-Water.

I first saw his work in the 1980s. I knew nothing of him and his life but I was drawn into the energy his work (called straight lines "the devil's tools"). 

The more I found out about him the more wonderful his work became. 

He was as much an environmental activist as an artist. These things were so intertwined that one cannot be separated from the other.

Not only did he paint with genius and invention, he also approached architecture and philosophy with the same avant-garde concepts. 

He designed houses that not only incorporated nature, but they were in fact so intertwined that you could not separate one from another.

Roof tops on building gave back the space they occupied on the land. 

Apartment buildings had "tree tenants"

where trees literally grew out of the windows.

He also believed that people in rented apartments had the right to paint around their windows as far as they could reach with a long handled brush, and design of their choosing to express their uniqueness as individuals.

He fought against the homogenization  of people, of architecture  and of thought 

He lived a life that celebrated nature through his art.

Its been over 40 years since Earth Day was founded  and our turds of pollution  have just gotten bigger and messier. Our Mother must be really disappointed in us.  

As Hundertwasser reminded us  : 

YOU ARE A GUEST OF NATURE 

BEHAVE

For more of his work check out http://www.hundertwasser.com/

Happy Earth Day. To Everyone.  Lets celebrate.

Sunday Muddy Sunday

This is a yellow Iris that smells like powdered lemonade mix.

Ha ha! Made you sniff the screen!

This post is the first in a series of Sunday posts on my blog inspired by my garden.

It is the end of May and things are in bloom. I live in Michigan, incase you need to be reminded, things in bloom are a big deal here. It is a short and sweet season of gardening in this area.

I love my garden. I love all gardens. They are magical places to me. They are spiritual. They are my church. They are where I feel connected to all creation.

So I decided to devote one blogging day a week to my garden and its inspiration.

This is not going to be a how to or a source of practical knowledge about plants and planting, although I do have some knowledge of things, but rather a celebration of plants and bugs and flowers and dirt.

This is one of the things that feeds my creativity. Something deep and profound happens in a place where you collaborate with nature.

I wish you really could smell this.

its a bouquet of some of my earliest blooming roses.

Zephirine Drouhin, Therese Bugnet, Reine de Violettes, and Clotilde Soupert

along with the remaining Korean lilacs.

It is heaven.

Random acts of nature

This awesome sunflower came up through a crack in the concrete behind my house.

It was probably planted by a bird or squirrel and this random act of nature provides me with a smile every time I walk out the back door.

It also reminds me that miracles can be small and unassuming, you just have to look in the right places.