One of the crazy things that happened during my time away from the blog, was "Snowmageddon". Two blizzards that left us with 3+ feet of snow. We had a ball in all that snow. The only bad thing was that the snow stayed for a very long time. At one point we had large "icebergs" throughout our neighborhood. Once the snow finally melted, it left a ton of trash strewn across the neighborhood. We had only had Cesar for a couple weeks, and walking him was my job, so with each walk I brought a bag to collect the trash I found. You know me, I couldn't just pick up the trash and move on, I had to take a picture of it first. There was something beautiful about the juxtaposition of the natural and the unnatural. I loved the contrast of the bright colors against the drab colors of winter. I really found some very interesting things too. And yes, I cleaned up every piece of it and even took the boys out to clean up the less interesting trash. So, I'm not sure what these photos will inspire, but this is litter through my eyes:
Nerds
I don't think this is Arugula
red & green circles
I swear my MIL didn't send me this!
An unexpected ear of corn. All I could think of at the time, was summer cannot get here fast enough!
A moment of Zen.
A snow sculpture. I loved how the snow melted and refroze grabbing hold of the bottle.
The decaying paper reminded me of lace.
This plastic bottle has an interesting texture.
Love the shape of this piece of shoe.
How could you not be inspired by kittens?
I honestly never thought I'd be inspired by litter, but it happened. I don't know that I've turned any of it into art, but I like to look at this mini series as a little work of art. So take a walk around your neighborhood or local park and help clean up the litter. Maybe you'll be inspired too. Maybe the inspiration will come from the shapes, colors, forms or words (remember Charlotte's Web) that you find. You might even find something that you'd like to include in your art. And even if you don't find any inspirational litter, you will have cleaned your environment up a bit! So it's a win win all around! Happy picking!
If you can believe it, I went on another field trip today. It was my 6th and final one of the school year. We went to the National Zoo in DC (one of my favorite places to go since I was a little girl). You'd think I'd be showing you picks of the animals, but I've taken pictures of most of the animals there since we go at least twice a year and we had just gone about a month ago over Spring Break. I'm sure I'll share some of those shots with you at some point. This trip, I was given strict orders that I couldn't take up a bunch of time taking pictures. Does my kid know me or what? Luckily, the picture taking restriction didn't extend to the bus ride, so I continued my "View from the bus" study that I started on a previous field trip with my older son. This time I'm just going to post my favorites instead of the whole bunch I took. You can click the highlighted link above to see and read about the original bus study. Please remember while viewing these photos that they are completely spontaneous. I just kept pressing the button and didn't see what I'd captured until I got home and uploaded the pictures. Many photos are blurry, but that's why I love them. They show movement and blur things so that blend together in interesting and inspiring ways. I was going to share with you what inspired me in each photo, but I decided to just post the pictures and let you interpret them on your own. If you have a specific question about any of them, just let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to reply.
