The artist and blogger Shan Bryan-Hanson is doing a series of meditations on objects that inspire her.
Money Plant by Shan Bryan-Hanson
She writes, “I’ve always been a person who really looks at things, which sometimes finds me meandering off on side trails (wasting time, some might say), however, this summer life got very busy and I didn’t spend much time looking.
Even though I completed a lot of tasks…I felt I missed out on something. Hence, the contemplative painting project.”
Both the writing and the paintings, especially those of maple seeds, thistles, milkweed, and dandelion, remind me of the wanderings of my childhood, hours I spent “reading” the outdoors, collecting buckeyes and smelling the green insides of their shells. I experienced the elements of nature as living creatures, poison berries glaring red out of sheer force of will, the floating seeds longing to be caught and wished upon, trusting me to release them back into the air. How clever of the winter ice to mold itself over the ivy leaves! How obliging of the hedge leaves, green cottony swatches in springtime, to harden in autumn into wedges that snapped satisfyingly between the fingers.
The helicoptering of seedpods seemed to me like a coded message. And I remember wondering how to find the money that the money plant offered, or whether its translucent disks might be negotiable as currency.