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!

Three Coneflowers

Coneflowers

Three Coneflowers ©2012 Bo Mackison

We all walk in mysteries. We do not know what is stirring in the atmosphere that surrounds us. ~ Goethe

As I hurry about, I continue to cross off wedding items on my brain list — press dress, pick up extra chairs, need to make lunch for nine, let’s see, rehearsal is at 4, better leave at 3, remember Highway 32 closed at Green Crossing, need to detour, pack the sunscreen and sun hats, and water, bring water bottles, gonna be near 100˚, need to wrap the present yet . . .

It was a gift of calming to take my early morning walk, and think about the beauty of these nearly wilted coneflowers, still growing, still filled with a wabi-sabi beauty as they grow in the midst of a drought. Time moves on, moment by moment.

There is beauty all around us. Beauty in the many mysteries we walk through on a daily basis. Beauty in the many actions we plan and accomplish. Beauty and love in the end product.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Bo is finally watching the clock. Son’s wedding countdown as of this posting: 30 hours. 🙂

Flowing Coneflowers

Overgrown Coneflowers

Flowing Coneflowers © 2011 Bo Mackison

Coneflowers are a symbol of strength — and the purple coneflower is also a potent healing.

These bright, beautiful blossoms are long-lasting, adding bright hues of purple for late July and August. Coneflowers have great character in their many stages of growth and decline, and then finally decay. A grace and posture accompany the coneflower through each of its life stages – bud, brightly petaled flower, dying flower, and the lovely seedhead.

The bright orange cone heads contrasting with the bright to pale pinks and purples are one of the prettiest natural contrasts in the prairie garden.

I never tire of the sway of orange, purple, pink — and they make me smile.

It is hard not to make friends with this patch of flowers.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is spending every available hour in one of the many area gardens these days — sometimes with camera in hand, sometimes relaxing on a blanket spread on the grassy hills, sometimes just looking, gazing, and taking it all in. Trying to hold onto a special moment a bit longer than a moment.

Desaturated Coneflowers

Desaturated Coneflowers © 2010 Bo Mackison

A pair of purple coneflowers, photographed at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison Wisconsin. I often see personification in my botanical photographs. To me, it looks like the two flowers are holding hands, you know, the way you might casually intertwine fingers with your lover or child as you stroll along…