Other
pieces, like
Mixed Carbon, hide
in my studio, bringing calm
and delight, but calling ​out for a wider
​audience. Or, my first ​Dried Flowers, from 2017,
are part of a set of greeting cards also wanting to share
their energy - - The cards are calling out "please
write letters, keep connections between
people going, & oh, by they way,
the US Postal Service
needs us!"

Over the
years, I have learned
to listen to my children & am
grateful for their guidance, like when they
unknowingly inspired me to finally seek help for my
lifelong anxiety or when they encouraged
me to actually sell my photographs.
So now, I am listening to
them & my work.

During
this time of
social isolation, it
feels strange to store all
these magical moments in my
studio, when they could be out in the
world for others to see. Because, at their heart,
Compost Compositions are all about community and
our essential interdependence. Just as the
green stuff and brown stuff have to
mix & mingle to create nutrient
rich 'black gold,' so too do
we depend on
​each other.

So here
we are! It's the
50th Anniversary of Earth
Week, we are entering our sixth
week at home as we #flattenthecurve,
and it's time to share the love  & powerful magic
in each of these Compost Compositions.
Please visit my online Store or the
Vermont Center for
Photography.

I am
excited to
donate a portion
of proceeds from all Compost
Compositions sold during April 2020 to
COVID-19 Relief and, in celebration of the 50th
anniversary of Earth Day to ecochallenge.org.
We are in this together. If you are able
and inspired, please share
​the magic!

My gratitude
for this pile is deep.
Year after year it transforms
waste into nourishment for gardens
while at the same time inviting me to be
patient, get my hands dirty, and
remember that sometimes
life is really messy.

For me,
It's so much
more than textures
& subtle muted
tones.

It all
seemed 
so funny, how
I packaged them up,
but am waiting two weeks
to send them, for fear I might have
The Virus and might unknowingly mail it to
my sister whose husband has cancer and definitely
can't get this thing. So once again my compost
and all its associated projects invite
patience and humor. This
really is all quite
messy...

...and
beautiful,
because even
though we may be
thousands of miles apart,
we are together, exploring these
funny pieces of paper and
wondering what will
emerge from it
all.

...because 
it is March and
even though it seems dark
and gray and lonely to be stuck at
home, I know that the bulbs will emerge
from the frozen earth & spring will
come, because that's nature's
routine, and I'm good
with that.

PS
It is still
Women's History
Month...so let's support 
each other as much as we can
from afar. For inspiration of all kinds,
check out my friend Jennifer Jewell's Podcast
Cultivating Place - - The January episodes were all
about the therapeutic and spiritual capacities
of our gardens - in all their forms. We
need that now, more
​than ever. 

I love
working with
these strange pieces of
paper. When we have coffee at our
house, which is rare, we use a French Press. So
for me, these are an entirely new material which have, until
recently, just been part of my decomposing compost.
Now, though, with my sister's inspiration,
they have become yet another
invitation to explore
our material
world.

When I 
take them out
of the 5-gallon compost
collection bucket and move them
into the rinsing tub in our sink, these dirty
filters become precious materials
filled with creative
​potential.

All I
want to do
is move in closer to
explore these materials about
which I know so little. Once again, my
compost invites me to consider more than meets
the eye. While I have an idea of what my sister, Sarah C.
Swett, might create out of these filters, their
back story, like so many back
stories, remains a
​mystery.

Clearly,
this narrative
is unfolding as I write,
Sarah's imagination leading her
and my investigations taking me where
they go. But here we are, unfiltered, making it
up along the way. It does seem, however, that ours is
a circular narrative, filled with the ebbs
and flows of our lives and
curiosities.

And it's more
than the reality that 
I hate waste. In fact, I found
these on a day when I had been
ruthlessly sending all manner of things
to the landfill. At that moment, though, I had
a feeling there was a story embodied
in those bags that I would
​explore someday.

So here I am,
wondering about my
daughter's old socks and my
mother-in-law's fabric remnants.
The thing that's bothering me most is
that they can not be composted because these
colorful textiles are made from or contain synthetic fibers.
As I have recently learned in Rebecca Burgess's
Fibershed, there is more to our clothes
than I ever knew.

It turns out
that I am asking
the same questions of
these scraps that I ask of my
compost. Where you do come from,
how did you grow or how were you made?
Who was responsible for your emergence and
ultimate journey to me? Were those responsible for
you (fabric or fruit) paid a living wage? Was 
the soil from which you grew (veggie or
fiber) rich with compost, or was
it polluted? The Fibershed,
it turns out, is like a 
foodshed or a
watershed.

Walking sustains
​energy, as does witnessing
creative Little Free
​Libraries...

So when not
exploring and playing
with extended family, I made
time to read and sew, taking a media
holiday of sorts. I hadn't planned it this way,
but it turns out I read about another inspiring and game-
changing woman, Rebecca Burgess and the Fibershed Project.
The subtitle "Growing a Movement of Farmers,
Fashion Activists, and Makers for a 
New Textile Economy" 
connects to, well,
​everything.

Each week,
​110 pounds of compost
processed in the bins behind
our garage.

As you know,
compost is a thing
for me, coming from a
place of deep caring
and ongoing
​curiosity.

I wonder
where these tons
of compost will lead
in 2020 and
​beyond. 

The flowers
started to wilt and I
noticed the texture of the
drying petals and the play of light
​from different angles.

It hit me,
though, as the 
pile got smaller, that
this is another one of those
routines I do all the time that is,
on the one hand, just another item on
the endless list, but on the other hand, is an
integral part of a bigger climate action narrative, a
story in which I find joy in routines that feel
good unto themselves but are also
part of a larger creative
​vision.

Like 
how I can
share photographs
of a previous year's leaves
on the wall of a gallery and by doing
so inspire others to think differently about
leaves, carbon and our
​material world. 

Please come
share the joy and
experience the wonder 
that is our waste at my artist's
talk next Friday, November 1. It will be
at AVA Gallery at 5pm. Oh, and it's also my
birthday and I was thinking how great
it would be to share it with others
who care about all this
stuff. See you then
and there!