Outside Inspiration: Lone Trees

I just got in last night from the last leg of an unplanned road trip back to California to help with some family matters. On the way into Colorado I stopped in the beautiful Canyonlands area of Utah where the soil is red and the skies are huge and blue. I took a run and hike up a canyon to a lone arch that springs off the canyons upper level. The ground was rocky and dry but every once in a while a bold tree would reach up out of the rock and break the beautiful stark horizon. I have always found those lone trees draw me. Maybe I have a thing for the lone struggle in a landscape that fights you all the way.

So when I saw this piece today, I had to pull it for the Outside Inspiration Friday post. This both plays to the scenes I was seeing yesterday and to the idea of surprising single elements creating the focus and beauty in a piece of art.

The artist here is a very interesting woman by the name of Ione Thorkelsson. She works in glass, adding other elements such as the found metal and the lichen she uses in this glass cast microcosm of our world, created as both a miniature of the globe we live on and a metaphor of the most basic truth of our lonely existence–lonely but reaching.

Ione has a lot to say as well as show us. You can get lost in her thoughts and meanderings on her website and I do encourage you to do so. She speaks very openly and honestly about her process, her struggles both in creating art and the rigors of showing and living as an artist. I have heard some of her words uttered near exactly by a number of polymer artists. It’s definitely worth a sit with a cup of coffee or tea today.

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