Accepting the Unexpected

Gianni knows how we like strange stuff to work with, me for my still lives, and Maggie for her constructions and other assemblages. On this day he brought a small barrel of wood shavings he saw in a woodworker’s atelier and had an immediate response to. So in they came and the first response was to how great they smelled, like being in a sawmill and taking in the sweet fragrance of pine and chestnut.

We give back and forth with Gianni. Whenever we come across something quirky or mysterious in some way, or very old and once of use in the old methods of working the land here, we bring it back for him. Part of this give and take brings us closer to the culture here and makes us more aware of the past and what remains of it in the present.

By accepting things as odd as this bowl of shavings I open myself to new ways of looking, and now that I have been making still lives I surprise myself by what speaks to me. I feel that seeing and photographing is an ongoing process of opening, again and again, to the unexpected, no matter what form it comes in.