Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: art

Komorebi

It is delightful to discover words in other languages that do not exist in your own language. I found a collection of untranslatable words in this Medium article that first introduced me to the word komorebi 7 years ago. I immediately fell in love with the word that is used to describe sunlight being filtered through the trees or “the interplay between the light and the leaves”. It has a sense of discovery in it. There can be all sort of reasons for a word existing or not existing in a language, but that is not my point. I am just charmed by a word that can teach us to open our eyes and minds to beauty everywhere. Soon I was noticing komorebi all the time when out walking. When I visited Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum a few years ago, I realised that Bessie MacNicol, one of the Arts…

Comments closed

If life hands you an empty toilet roll, …

It’s mid-February, this is my first blog post of 2013, and I decide to write about empty toilet rolls. Yup. A picture on Facebook had me drop the tidying-up-so-I-could-work project and rush to the keyboard. The artist, Yuken Teruya, has cut delicate, beautiful trees out of toilet paper rolls with the base rooted in the roll and the branches reaching out to the world. A picture of his toilet-paper-roll tree is circulating on the internet, and it made its way to my friend’s Facebook page. (I’m not posting an image here to avoid copyright issues.) Flashback to my time in Nairobi, Kenya and my son’s nursery school years. I saved all sorts of “garbage” for their arts and crafts classes. Art material was expensive because it was imported, and there was plenty of good material available right at hand: egg cartons, silver and gold linings from cigarette packages, and… empty…

1 Comment

Fresh orchid and fishing cats

Color communicates. I just received an orchid fresh off the plane from Bangkok. With the sun streaming in the window, the opportunity to photograph the delicate flower couldn’t be bypassed. It gave me practice with my camera, had me do a bit more work with my new Flickr account, and gave me a chance to share the sunshine-y happiness of a tropical flower in a northern climate. My son, the orchid transporter, also brought me some cats from Koh Samui. No, not live ones, wooden ones seated in a boat with their fishing poles. Obviously successful at their task because a tiny fish dangles from each pole. Again, the bright colors in the sunshine just set a lovely mood for this day, so I had to share.

Comments closed