Category Archives: architecture

Useful trials and errors

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Gila Woodpecker Nest

I was walking one morning and discovered in an old sycamore snag, this entrance to a Gila woodpecker nest. The birds are opportunists and will dig out rotten bark to make a soft, protective nest for their young.

What struck me about this opening, though, were the number of false starts that surround it. The bird didn’t immediately say, ah, here, I will build my home. Instead, view the number of beginnings and first attempts that surround it.

Perhaps we should be more like the woodpecker. For each creative endeavor that we try, there will be several tentative jabs and pokes until we find our true stride!

Sculpture is the art of intelligence.
~Pablo Picasso

 

The reality of art

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Reality imitating art

The Phoenix Art Museum has a wonderful wing devoted to installation art, modern art, post-modern art. Imagine my surprise when I viewed this picture, looked for the artist’s name, and discovered it wasn’t “art” at all, but rather a shadowed window into the museum loggia. Great fun!

 There’s a saying among prospectors. Go out looking for one thing, and that’s all you’ll find.
~Robert Flaherty, explorer~

Accepting the inevitable

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T-P the house

Can you just sense the sinuous curl in the paper as it drifts from the trees?

It was breezy the day I took this picture, (and no, I was neither participant nor recipient!) and I shared for a moment in the feeling of exuberance the streamers portrayed.

Then I thought about what I’d do if this were my house. Those trees are tall and there is no way I’d be climbing a tall ladder in the windy weather to retrieve the strands. I could pull on the rolls, but I am sure they would obligingly break at the nearest perforation–that’s how they are designed.

I could find the kids that did it, and persuade them not to ever, ever do it again. I could wait for my own teenagers to grow up so they wouldn’t encourage it.

OR, I could just laugh and wave as cars drove past.

We’ve all been there, in moments we’d rather forget and can’t undo, and wished we were a million miles away from, and aren’t. Sometimes the only thing to do is accept the situation–and pray for rain!

~Each day brings its own gifts.~
~Marcus Aurelius~

 

 

 

All good things come in threes

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I encountered these three roof lines in a historical district near the Phoenix Art Museum. They look alike, but are quite different.

Each is painted a slightly variant shade of blue. The windows they shelter are different. The supporting posts are lodged at different points on the roof. The third bears a chimney and a different medallion at the peak. It is almost as though each has proclaimed their own individuality, although staying related.

It’s like human triplets. I’ve often wondered about the practice of dressing identical triplets exactly alike. And then I hear that even then, mothers can tell them apart, knowing them so well from before birth.

We are all alike, and we are all different. And that’s okay!

The walls we build around ourselves
to keep out sadness
also keep out joy.
~Jim Rohn~