Nature's Sculpture - Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

On a couple of recent walks through the marsh I caught these fleeting sculptures of tules and other marsh plants with their reflections.  Wind and rain have been beating down the spent vegetation all winter.  Their heads are submerged and stalks bent and creased by the forces of nature.  The shapes seem “afloat” in the flooded marsh, their reflected other half forming the whole.

These more delicate plants form “boat frames” reminiscent of the kind of frames I have made from willow wands as the basis for my salmon skin and paper-covered boat sculptures (for those of you who have seen my artwork over the years).

With spring stirring the mix, new green shoots of tule & cattail will soon rise out of these mounds of “dried” plant material, and red-winged blackbirds will be competing for nest sites within their sheltering thickets.      

Posted by jackie.