Desert Botanicals at Tempe Festival of the Arts

Agave Abstract

Agave Abstract © 2011 Bo Mackison

This abstract photograph of several agave leaves focuses more on the pattern of the plant and the colors. Since it was photographed using a shallow depth of field (not all of the plant was in focus when I composed the photo) the tiny spines transformed into luminescent circles. If you look closely, only a part of three different leaves are in focus. The rest is left to your imagination to fill in what YOU see.

This will be one of the new photographs in a series of desert botanicals that I will be introducing at this weekend’s Art Festival in Tempe, Arizona. In addition to the botanicals, there will also be two other new series — an Arizona National Park series and an Arizona Mission series. I’ll post a few photographs from these in the next posts.

Seeded Earth Photography and I will be exhibiting at the Tempe Festival of the Arts held in downtown Tempe, the Mill Avenue district. The show begins tomorrow, Friday March 25 and runs though Sunday March 27. The festival is open from 10 a.m. to dusk each day.

I’ll be on Mill Avenue in a corner booth, Booth #1422, Easy to find — I’m located near the Jack in the Box. If you’re in the Phoenix area, stop in and say hello.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is living in Tucson for two months – exhibiting her photography in art shows, taking photographs, and blogging about photography, art fairs, and living life “solo”.  She will be at the Tempe Festival of the Arts this weekend, showing several of her new desert series.

A Matter of Perspective

Ocotillo Thorns

Ocotillo Spines @ 2011 Bo Mackison

This is an ocotillo, one of the most plentiful plants in the Sonoran desert. It offers a great lesson in perspective. When you look at the ocotillo, do you first see its long, sharp spines? And when you notice the spines, do you see them as a threat to you or do you see them as the protector of the plant?

The ocotillo, a major shrub in the Sonoran desert, acts more like a succulent than a woody plant. It can absorb sunlight for photosynthesis through its leafless stem during the dry seasons. And when there is a desert rain, it will produce full grown leaves within three days. This plant has both primary and secondary leaves. When the primary leaves fall off the shrub, the remaining woody stalk elongates and becomes a spine.

Ocotillo Blooming

Ocotillo Blooming © 2011 Bo Mackison

Perhaps your attention is first drawn to the bright cluster of flowers at the tips of the branches, to the beauty of the tightly clustered  red cylindrical blooms.

Ocotillos are a favorite of migrating hummingbirds. The ocotillo is often the only spring desert flower in abundant bloom, even in very dry spring seasons. Hummingbirds, which migrate  from Mexico to their breeding grounds as far north as Alaska, pass over the desert in huge numbers and get their nourishment, the nectar, from the bright red tubular flowers.

Ocotillo Star

Ocotillo Star © 2011 Bo Mackison

Or perhaps you see the ocotillo in a different way. Perhaps, when you look at the ocotillo from a unique angle, you can imagine a desert full of woody stars.

So many perspectives, all from the same plant. Just depends on what you focus on, what you notice, and how closely you look. What part of the ocotillo first attracts your attention?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is living in Tucson through the first week in April, exhibiting her photography in art fairs, taking photographs in deserts,  and blogging about “Bo goes solo”. She is learning much about life as she studies the plants in the desert.

Organ Pipe Cactus — Another Visit

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Organ Pipe and the Whirling Cloud

I’m feeling quite a lot like this organ pipe cactus–all askew on my base of support, a bit in disarray, not knowing which direction I should be heading next. And in my tangled chaos, I need to pull out some organization and steady work habits.

The Tempe Art Festival begins this Friday, March 25 and goes through Sunday, March 27. I was notified of a recent booth change for Seeded Earth Studio which appears to be to my benefit. I am now located on Mill Street between University and Seventh and I have a corner booth. Now I am imagining a number of corner booth set-ups, both in my head and on paper. Of course, I never really make the final set-up decision until I am there, rearranging the panels like it’s a giant toy puzzle.

I’ll be pre-occupied for the next few days–putting the finishing touches on my hand crafted cards, assembling the sets, and making a card insert for each set. There are five new sets, all with an Arizona theme — desert botanical, desert landscape, Arizona National Parks, Mission at San Xavier del Bac, and Tumacacori Mission.

I also need to check each of my new prints and photo canvases–part of my quality control. There will be  first-time-exhibited photographs of Arizona at the Tempe show. I will probably keep checking them–a bit compulsively–until they are safely hung on the booth’s walls or placed in a print bin. But I want my booth to be perfect when the clock strikes 10:00 a.m. on this Friday and the first visitors come into the Seeded Earth Studio booth. I’m quite excited!

Now…back to work!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is living in Tucson through the first week in April, exhibiting her photography in art fairs, taking photographs in deserts,  and blogging about “Bo goes solo”. She is also scrambling to get everything in top-notch order for her upcoming show.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Organ Pipe Cactus at Organ Pipe Cactus NM

Organ Pipes at Organ Pipe Cactus NM

Journal Entry:

8:50 am. 74˚ F, windy, gusting to 30 mph. Sunny, no clouds, but dusty in the distance–the faraway mountains that I usually see in detail are obscured in a dust cloud.

I am quite fond of the organ pipe cactus. It doesn’t really live in this part of the Sonoran Desert, it has been planted by the Desert Museum staff. Before I go back to Wisconsin, I want to make one more trip Organ Pipe Land, to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, nearly three hours west of Tucson.

Organ Pipe — this one has 14 arms. Are they called arms? Most of them come straight from the ground. Two arms on this plant have split–like twins–and have a V-shape at the top.

18 feet–tallest. 8 inches–shortest.

I wonder what makes the girth of the cactus pull in–like a cord was tightened around its circumference and then removed, leaving an indentation. It’s a handsome specimen with lots of strictures. I like its shape. It is more interesting, the changes. Wouldn’t be as visually appealling if each arm was perfectly smooth, all the way from bottom to the very tip.

Just like people. The prim and proper aren’t nearly as interesting as those who don’t insist on showing the world only their perfect selves. It seems the more mistakes one makes, the more chances, risks that person has taken, the more they have learned.

Mistakes = trying over and over until the problem is solved, the project is finished.

Sometimes a mistake is apparent–this organ pipe had a virus and one of its ends is malformed, bulbous, some might say it is ugly, but I think its curves and bubbled surfaces are distinctive. It doesn’t lessen the worth of the organ pipe in my eyes. It gives me something more to study, to contemplate. It’s like a bit of decoration on the cactus plant.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is living in Tucson for two months, exhibiting her photography in art shows, taking photographs, and blogging about photography, art fairs, and living life “solo.”

Lessons from an Organ Pipe Cactus

Organ Pipe At Desert Museum

Organ Pipe Cactus © 2011 Bo Mackison

Sometimes I get so frustrated with carrying out my grand plans, I wish I could perform magic. I wish for a magic wand or a magic trick, when in actuality, all I need to do is do the work until the project is completed. Do the work? Does that mean I have to write all the steps down on a to-do list and then grind my way through each step until the project is completed?

Well, the bad news is, yes. Sometimes that is exactly what is required.

But there’s good news, too. Sometimes the plan requires walking down new paths, thinking new thoughts, exploring, questioning. All the while muttering, like Alice once did, “Curiouser and curiouser!”

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I went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum early this morning. They open at 7:30 am which I think is a perfect time for an outdoor museum to open, especially one located in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. I can spend a couple of hours exploring the desert and taking photos, then spend a half hour writing in my nature journal while sipping a raspberry ice tea, and I pull my car out of the parking lot as the Sunday crowd is waiting in line to get in.

I spent quite a lot of time studying the plants, walking a while, then stopping again, taking my sweet time. Twice, I had a museum docent question me. The first gentleman asked me if I was OK. (I was. Yes, indeed. More than OK–I was feeling great.)  The second docent asked me if I was looking for something special. Well, I was looking for something special, but I didn’t say so because I didn’t know what I was looking for–and I didn’t, until I saw it.

Mostly, I was looking for new growth. For a sign of spring (what I, as a Midwestern, thinks of as spring) on this first day of spring. You would expect to see all kinds of growing things in the desert in spring, but it doesn’t work like that. It has only rained once since I arrived in Arizona on February 7th and then it was only a sprinkle. So there is much that is dry in the desert, and not much evidence of new growth.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is living in Tucson for two months, exhibiting her photography in art shows, taking photographs, and blogging about photography, art fairs, and living life “solo.”