With 2009 neatly tucked in behind us, it’s time to get started on the path ahead – financially, emotionally, physically – it’s another chance to start fresh. Along with renewed hope for the future, I find that I am newly inspired to examine, create, and share. If you have never been artistically or decoratively inclined, there is never a better time to start than now. While I’m not saying I want you to rip out the fireplace and re-tile the shower, I am saying that every single person I know has some creativity buried somewhere inside. Starting small and casual is always the best way. You could buy some wine, get some random art supplies at the craft store and invite friends over to make things. Anything. It doesn’t actually matter what you make, just that you tried to make it. You know me, I like to make just about everything. I go through growth spurts of inspiration and different artistic phases. However, it seems that I’m pretty stuck on my latest love.
Toward the middle of December I realized I am having a crazy passionate love affair with twigs. Though I have been collecting and discarding all manner of nature-based ephemera for as long as I can remember, twigs and branches captured my attention more than ever this fall. In San Mateo the wind is often punishing and it’s prone to giving every living thing a good thrashing. In the mornings after a particularly bad wind I would wake to find giant branches strewn up and down our street. Their stark, sculptural beauty captivated me. I began bringing smaller branches into the store and using them in arrangements, creating vignettes of hanging necklaces, postcards on ribbons and string, and hanging them in their creepy-hand-like glory from the ceiling. People began bringing me their downed branches to make art from.
This Christmas someone gave me a lichen-covered twig. It was beautiful! A tiny little ecosystem of gloriously green alien plant life. I used it in one of my new clock-box vignettes (photo below). On a recent visit to Golden Gate Park, Miranda and I collected numerous lichen covered branches lying on the ground. They are now artfully displayed around the store and I definitely love them too much to part with them.
This whole strange arboreal affair got me thinking, I should share it! Thus, in late January my good friend Lisa will be helping me to co-host an “I heart Twigs” night at the store. We’ll be drinking wine, sharing laughs and creating things with found nature and beautiful objects. When it gets closer I’ll be sending out an invite.
In the meantime, I encourage you to admire the little things nature puts in your path. Bring in an acorn, collect some pine cones, save a broken branch for use in a tabletop arrangement. The sky is the limit!
Much love,
Melisa
