Garden Party – Vintage Coneflower

Olbrich Garden

Garden Party – Vintage Coneflower © 2013 Bo Mackison

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” Victor Hugo

Coneflowers have quite the joyous attitude, the dancing ballerinas of the prairie. And I love the thought of prairie land at my feet, standing amidst coneflowers swaying in a soft breeze, while stars twinkle in the far beyond.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.   Her exhibit, Garden Party – A Celebration of Botanical Photography, is at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin and runs through September 5, 2013.

Garden Party – Coneflowers Aside the Path

Coneflowers in Olbrich Garden

Aside the Path © 2013 Bo Mackison

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of creation is completed within us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight. ~ Michael Bridge

I paged through one of my older journals this morning, looking for a quotation to pair with this photograph. I thought perhaps I’d find something related to the idea of walking on the journey and noticing the flowers along the way. I filled this particular journal several years ago — lines from poetry that resonated with me, notes from the books I was reading, quotations I’d cataloged for future use, scribbled ideas and plans and lists.

Instead I found the above quote by Michael Bridge, and after I read and re-read it several times, I realized that it truly resonated with me, with where I am traveling on my personal journey.

There are early mornings when I lose myself in these often studied journal pages. Today I also found myself in awe at the ending of a poem — which happens to be about the everyday and transcendence. The poem is “Initiation II” by Nina Bogin. I once called it my “Calming Down Poem”. Here is the ending, though the entire poem is delicious and worth reading/absorbing:

I climbed the pink stairs, entered
the house as calm and ephemeral
as my own certainty:
this is my house, my key,
my hand with its new lines.
I am as old as I will ever be.

I spent an hour yesterday contemplating the first half of 2013, and marveling at the distance I have traveled. Not only the distance on a cross-country trip from Arizona to Wisconsin, but also the distance I have traveled on my creative path.

I set up first solo photography exhibit this past weekend, and its opening was yesterday, the first day of the second half of the year. A solo show was once a goal I thought out of my reach, and now it is no longer a wish or a dream, but reality.

I hold many dreams, still. Dreams that once seemed impossible, but as I keep adding new skills and venturing into places I have never before dared, the dreams are no longer dreams. They are achievable goals.

There is still much work to be done, but as I complete each new step, I get nearer to my goal of providing on-line and in-person workshops to complement the Desert Wisdom Cards I’ve created.

This month I finish Jen Louden’s TeachNow course. I complete advanced training in Creativity Coaching in mid-September. I’ve discovered a wonderful resource for in-person workshops on book structures in Madison, and these supplement my book-making activities in Tucson. And so my art career is in transition.

Though photography remains an passionate piece of my daily life, I’m adding new techniques, expanding on current themes, and my photography practice evolves as I add creating artist books to my repertoire. Each step completed leads to the next step, and the momentum continues.

I look forward to amazing things in the last half of 2013.

Life is good.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.   Her exhibit, Garden Party – A Celebration of Botanical Photography, is at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin and runs through September 5, 2013.

 

Garden Party – White Coneflowers

Coneflowers in Olbrich Garden

White Coneflowers © 2013 Bo Mackison

“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair…” ~ Susan Polis Shutz

This array of stunning white coneflowers makes ME want to go dance in the sun!

The coneflowers are abundant this year in the prairie spaces of Wisconsin. Perhaps one of the gifts that comes with the record-breaking rainfalls we’ve had this spring and early summer. Every prairie space is white and purple with the waving, dancing, bouncing cone flowers, their bright orange heads bobbing, their brilliant rays fluttering.

It is nearly impossible to walk among hundreds of coneflowers and not dance and sing, if not with your body, then surely with your heart and soul.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.   Today is the opening for her exhibit, Garden Party – A Celebration of Botanical Photography at the Alicia Ashman Branch Library Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin. There are coneflowers dancing upon one of the walls in the children’s area!

Garden Peony

Peony Polaroid

Peony Polaroid © 2013 Bo Mackison

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words.  They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.  ~Lydia M. Child

Back to My Roots – Prairie Grasses

Little Bluestem

Little Bluestem © 2013 Bo Mackison

I like to think of landscape not as a fixed placed but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet.  ~ Gretel Ehrlich, in introduction to Legacy of Light (1987)

Redtop - Wisconsin Prairie

Redtop in Wisconsin Prairie © 2013 Bo Mackison

I must confess that I have a weakness of empty places. ~ Tony Hillerman in Travelers’ Tales American Southwest (2001)

I don’t think of prairies (or deserts, for that matter) as empty places.

I see them as open spaces, places where the eye can travel without abrupt barriers, where the land offers opportunity for connection, not a dis-connect.

Little Bluestem - Wisconsin Prairie

Little Bluestem in Wisconsin Prairie © 2013 Bo Mackison

. . . Fitting floor / For this magnificent temple of the sky. . .  ~ William Cullen Bryant (1866, “The Prairies”)

I like to walk in the prairie landscape, in the desert landscape, and be able to see in the distance.

Not distance from a mountain top – there is no easy access to walk the landscape spread before me from a mountain peak – though the view from mountain top is exhilarating, awe-provoking.

No, my preference is to see the distant landscape, and know it is under my feet as well as beyond my gaze.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is getting re-acquainted with the prairie and grasslands in preparation for the next set of Wisdom Cards.