Overview

The artist guides our eye to the clutter of the room and the quality of light on the apples, and we wonder. She attunes our ear to the scratch of the pen hurrying to write the most earnest supplications before self-consciousness takes over. Surely the fact that I worry means something. Surely my room of so many days holds stories worth setting down. Consequence is an act of imagination. Everyone wants to imagine a consequential life. (from In My Room) A heron slips along the shoreline as if on rice paper. A great angler, he will place a reflective object on the water's surface-a pin oak leaf, for example-and watch for a fish to investigate. The heron's patience, driven by necessity, far outstrips mine. Fifteen minutes in and I lower the binoculars to look for other birds. Meanwhile, the green heron waits, motionless, seemingly dispassionate, until a fish is in range and he strikes. Is it hyperbole to compare the jolt to lightning? His long neck shooting out and snapping back, he breaks the water's surface like a diver with barely a ripple and comes back with the catch. He is fed because he waited, quiet and watchful. (from Green Heron)