‘Loraine Sunshine’

June 27, 2011 by 5 Comments
'Loraine Sunshine' False Sunflower

‘Loraine Sunshine’ False Sunflower © 2011 Bo Mackison

I always thought this flower in my garden was a sunflower. Now I find out, while doing a bit of research for blog writing, that it is not a true sunflower, but a false sunflower. It is a good thing a flower’s beauty is not in its name, but in its looks. Botanically speaking, a sunflower has green leaves, while this flower has green and white variegated leaves. Hence the false label.

'Loraine Sunshine' Variegated Foliage

Variegated © 2011 Bo Mackison

It is a ‘Loraine Sunshine’ heliopsis and when I was in the nursery picking out replacement stock for a few spaces in my garden, one of the reasons I chose this flower was because of its deep yellow color. A second reason was because of its unusual foliage.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is enjoying the backyard garden this year, especially since plentiful rains are keeping everything green and growing.

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Almost Daisies

June 23, 2011 by 7 Comments
Almost Daisy Time

Almost Daisy Time © 2011 Bo Mackison

The garden is ready to explode with flowers.

We’ve had the rain. Now we just need a few hours of sunshine to get these flowers to pop! The coreopsis, my ‘Loraine sunshine’ plants which are called false sunflowers because they have variegated leaves, the wild geranium, and the Shasta daisies — all are on the verge of blooming.

My garden will be transformed from a garden of few flowers — a couple of iris, the blanket flowers, and a few coral bells the rabbits haven’t yet found — to a flower riot of yellows, whites, and purples.

This is the time of year when I love to take a break from my computer in mid-afternoon, pull my Adirondack chair under the shade of the maple tree, grab a good book and a glass of iced tea, and “set for a spell” as my grandma used to say.

Summer heaven!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. When she is not admiring her flower garden, she is photographing the flowers and getting ready for the Spring Green Art Fair this weekend in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

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Make the World a Better Place?

June 16, 2011 by 8 Comments
IMG_8963

Pink Lupine and Bachelor’s Buttons

Anyone remember reading the book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney?

It is a children’s book written in the early 1980s, and it was popular when my children were young. It was my older daughter’s favorite book for many a month.

As the story goes, Miss Rumphius is a woman who wants to do three things in her life – travel the world, live by the sea when she is older, and make the world a better place. She accomplishes her first two goals with no problem, but she is stumped when she wonders how to improve the world. Finally she thinks of a plan. She decides to scatter lupine seeds wherever she goes. And so she does!

Think how much we would all benefit if each of us had a plan to better the world, and we put our plan in action. Just like Miss Rumphius.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She will be at the Leeper Park Art Fair this weekend, June 18 and 19, in South Bend, Indiana. Booth #107.

 

 

 

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A Distraction of Poppies

June 13, 2011 by 10 Comments
Poppy and Bokeh

Poppy and Bokeh © 2011 Bo Mackison

Sherpa and I spent last weekend in Milwaukee. We attended the Wright and Like Tour, a tour of eleven houses in the Milwaukee area, all designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and related architects. The annual tour is sponsored by the The Frank Lloyd Wright® Wisconsin Heritage Tourism Program, Inc., created with the assistance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the State of Wisconsin Department of Tourism.

This is the third year we have attended. We attended our first tour in Madison in 2009 and last year toured homes and businesses in the Racine area.

The main tour was held on Saturday, and although the weather was overcast with a few sprinkles here and there, it was not unpleasant outside. As an added bonus, I much prefer taking photographs of architecture when it is cloudy. Sunny days, especially during the mid-day, casts harsh shadows and the light is too bright and washes out details.

I have hundreds of photos to go through, and so I will be posting photographs of the exteriors of the houses we toured, but it will take me a while to organize them.

Since Sherpa and I were celebrating our anniversary, we splurged and added the second day of the tour. It turned out to be an excellent decision. We saw the Lyndon Sculpture Garden in the morning and visited the Greek Annunciation Orthodox Church, one of Wright’s last designs, in the early afternoon before heading home.

The weather was sunny and mild, with a few scattered clouds, on Sunday, providing great background for our walk through the 40 acre sculpture garden. The garden was the creation and much loved project of Margaret Blakey Bradley, one of the greatest benefactors of the arts (and other projrects) in Milwaukee.

Finally, the visit to the church was the highlight of the tour for me. I sat in the church’s interior for well over an hour, just looking in awe of the beauty, the design, the details. Of course, I took lots of photographs in both the garden and of the exterior and interior of Annunciation Church, so I will have plenty of photographs to share with you.

So…if I took hundreds of photographs of buildings and sculpture, why am I posting yet another photo of this lovely pink poppy? Well, because I absolutely fell in love with one of the tour home’s gardens and I received permission to photograph some of the flowers. There were hundreds to choose from, but I was totally captivated by this particular poppy and spent the majority of my time ooh-ing and aah-ing and admiring three pink poppies.

It seems no matter where I look, there is always a wonder or two to photograph.And that truly makes me a happy photographer.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is catching up on some photo business today before diving into her new stash of photographs.

 

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Trio of Tulips – and a Muse

May 19, 2011 by 5 Comments
Tiny Tulips

Tiny Tulips © 2010 Bo Mackison

Spirit creates; that behind nature, throughout nature, spirit is present; one and not compound, it does not act upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or through ourselves…it does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the old. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature 1856

When I ask photographers who inspires their work, their philosophy, their experimentation with their photographs, I often hear mention the photographic greats–Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson are often mentioned, as are many contemporary photographers.

I draw much of my inspiration from the study of photographers, both famous and obscure. But I find my photography is also influenced, not only by artists, but also by architects, naturalists, the natural world, and an entire art movement.

One of the people who has deeply influenced my photography was not a photographer, but one of the world’s most innovative architects of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright. I live in “Wright Country” and take advantage of regional tours to see his architecture, both exteriors and interiors, when available.

I find inspiration in his use of nature and natural materials in his designs, his functional and simplified forms, and his prominent use of art in his buildings.

Wright drew much of his inspiration from nature, and particularly from the native Midwestern prairie to which he had access for much of his childhood. He opened the boxy houses of his time, instead encouraging the use of wide open spaces and large expanses of windows that brought the out-of-doors to the inside of the house.

Wright also had a deep respect for harmony, and for harmonious relationships between form and function. He typically included natural items in his homes, usually transformed from their natural forms to into geometric designs. Wright was also an American Arts and Crafts Movement proponent. This movement focused on designing the items in a home to make an artistic statement.

When I take photographs, especially in gardens or natural areas, I frequently create photographs with one of Wright’s concepts in mind. I capture the beauty of the natural outdoor to bring into the living spaces of the home. And offer an interior garden all year-long — a bonus in the Midwest!

The photo of the trio of tulips was taken at the Allen Centennial Garden on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is printing some new pieces for her first big show of the summer art festival season, the Barrington Art Festival in Barrington, Illinois on May 28-29, 2011.

 

 

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