Living Art

This is our garden truck that, you can see, hasn't been used in a while for gardening. When my husband brought it home many years ago, it was love at first sight for me. Look at that torquoise color! And such a big expressive face! What personality! And, now, in its ripe old age, it has become a veritable work of living Art--a lovely vine winding its way through the windows, over the roof and onto the back bed, an on-going creation that stands as a testament to time, transformation, and immortality.

Necessary Art

In a recent article in Poets and Writers an editor uses the word 'necessary' as one of his criteria for choosing a book to publish. He was using it in the sense of originality, or possessing that quality that will increase sales by word-of-mouth, but it is still such a vague, subjective word. Perhaps 'spark' is a better word. Or 'resonance.' But 'necessary?' Every year, during this time, my husband and I pour through seed and plant catalogues, trying to decide what flowers will be needed on our specialty cut flower farm. What colors will turn the most heads? What fragrances? There are some flowers, like the sweat pea, that always evoke a story, a memory. While others inspire and are taken home to be arranged into art, then painted or photographed. Still others that provide comfort or grant forgiveness or just plain bring a smile. It is with great pain that we leave out some beautiful varieties, and it has more to do with money than necessity. It is true there are subjects over-visited in the world of writing, and that some writers have such a magical gift for language they could write 500 pages on rock formations and we would still be awed. But who can truly judge what is necessary? Doesn't the creation itself make it so?