Yup! I'm still here, and so, finally, is summer! Happy Summer Solstice to you all! Ours has been a warm, humid day book-ended with fairly severe thunderstorms, leaving the ground completely soaked and covered in tree debris. Since my last post, the school year has ended so the kids are home all day, I turned 37, and we've spent three lovely weekends at the family cabin.
This past week, we even took advantage of a fun opportunity for an impromptu trip to Duluth, and it was grand. My favorite part was basking on the warm beach sand on a 60-degree day, on the Minnesota Point spit. That part of Lake Superior is like the ocean for me with miles of soft sand and the water stretching out beyond sight.
One of my birthday gifts was Andy Goldsworthy's gorgeous book, Time. I've admired Goldsworthy's work for years and it was a pleasure to page through this book with my girls. Natalie, my youngest, showed a special interest in it and recently tried her hand at a couple of Goldsworthy-esque works. Here she is with her first attempt using wet sand at the edge of the water at the cabin's beach. It's a short river or wave of sand, deliberately sculpted with a curved edge and a deeper middle to allow the flow of the lake into it.
Then, while on Minnesota Point, Natalie and I worked together like birds and collected nesting materials to build a driftwood nest on the beach. We started with a shallow pit, and built the nest around and on top of it. The total size was probably about 2 - 3 feet in diameter and 8 inches high.
I hoped someone saw it and thought it was neat, but more likely someone probably thought it was a good place to start a beach fire. Regardless of how it was recognized, the process of working on this with my little one, and building a structure that would inevitably succumb to the elements, was an exercise in creation, adaptation, satisfaction, and serenity.
After an exceptionally long weekend, it was good to get back to the studio and into the swing of things. And it was good to see that we have another clear winner in our Lake of the Month poll. Though it was a tighter race, this month's lucky subject is the long and fingery Chesapeake Bay! Stay tuned for an update when this piece is available in the shop, and, as always, add your nominations for the next Lake of the Month poll by leaving a comment in this post.
Comments