Artist Date

An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In it's most primary form, the artist date is an excursion, a play date that you preplan and defend against all interlopers - Julia Cameron

Natural History Museums are even more inspiring to me than Art Museums. The natural world is a never-ending well of mind-blowing design and form. 

My "interlopers" have February vacation this week. I took them to the Harvard Museum of Natural History and Anthropology  yesterday. My daughter Joannah took her sketch book, my twelve year old son Parker took his attitude and my youngest, ten year old Simon took his love of birds and "awesome rocks".

I have long wanted to see the glass botanical collection. It blew me away! The accuracy and attention to absolute detail seems super-human. The dried and gnarled roots of some of the wild plants and tiny hairs had me staring for long stretches of time. 

The magnified cross sections of the ovaries of the various plants were mesmerizing. I couldn't stop snapping the best photos I could given the low light. These seed chambers called out to me and the messages I am trying to tease out in my current 'Nurture' series. I have been considering the concentric circles of experiences that grow from seeds of inspiration. I think the idea of playing with the imagery of where the seeds start life if intriguing. 

Stay tuned!