Sycamore Seed Sticks

Sycamore Seed Sticks, originally uploaded by escher....

This sculpture is dedicated to my girlfiend and land art partner in crime. Just like her intuition that bark would be translucent she also saw the beauty in sycamore seeds. You can see how in these wonderful photos: Sycamore Seed Sails, Sycamore Butterflies, Sycamore Sun Star.

Ever since she made those sculptures, I've been wanting to use them myself and I loved how the newly grown ones have a range of colours from lime-green, through pink to red.

Their early season delicateness meant I couldn't be rough with them as their soft tissue would not cope so I pinned them to short stalks of grass and then pondered what to do with them next.

It was time to be pierced with a plethora of strange looks and it seemed every car occupant, dog walker and passer by wanted to ensure that we knew we were behaving weirdly. I now felt very translucent myself and we searched for somewhere where were less people around, where there were sycmmore leaves in the sunlight and where we could be at peace if just for a little while. We didn't find anywhere!

Many a time it has been said that 'a picture is worth a thousand words' or 'the camera never lies.' Well I'll let you into a little secret. The camera places a little frame around a microcosm of life, focusses in on only what is there and makes that the whole world and ignores what else is around it. I am just like that when I am concentrating making something or just out looking at a flower or a leaf. I am sure this picture is saying to you: spring sunshine, leaves and the sweet smell of flowers. Well it was true that is what it was like but what you aren't seeing is that this branch was hanging over the pavement next to a roundabout on a busy road.

It was 10 foot or so up and I ensnared it with a bent stick and pulled it down for my partner to hold while I fixed the sticks with the seeds on onto each leaf, before letting go and hoping that as it pinged upwards they would stay attached. I then crouched on the floor and took its photo, while motorists gawped and joggers stared.

But I don't think that my image is lying to you. Even in the midst of nosey people and whizzing traffic, there is beauty in a translucent leaf pierced by the mid-spring sun. If you enclose your thoughts and your senses around it then the road noise and the invasive stares fall away just like if you had enclosed it in a viewfinder frame, in a photograph or a fleeting moment. This is really what I am always trying to say, trying to experience and trying to learn about anew. That everywhere there is wondrous life of such striking beauty just there wherever you look. Always growing and changing and renewing in the epic cycle of life. Mother nature is everything and all that you need.