This is a view from a window, a step outside. It’s a breeze and bright sun, cool water and shade. It’s a song and a sigh. It’s exuberance, interplay, and delight. It’s chaos and pattern together. It’s order and loss. It’s growth, falling pollen, bending stems. It’s longing, echo, and reverberance.
The title comes from the Hibiscus Schizopetalus, which is a lovely, leggy plant with upside-down flowers which only last a day. Some call it a “Spider Hibiscus”, others call it “Japanese Lantern Hibiscus”, and other yet call it “Fringed Hibiscus”. The house I grew up in had a specimen, sort of near where we parked the cars–a very unobtrusive, mostly ignored part of the yard, honestly. The one I have now, I bought from the Fairchild Tropical Garden plant shop. It lives in a pot, and it has been put upon by marauding iguanas, giving the trunk a pronounced lean because of how often an iguana would perch upon it, weighing it down, to snack upon its leaves. Nevertheless, it’s brave and persistent, giving flowers year round, provided it gets the care it needs. I can see those blossoms from the window of my tiny studio; I admire them there and when I step out onto the patio. Those delicate blossoms dangle jauntily in the wind, and I wanted to make a visual symphony to honor their brief and bright gift to my days.
This work began–and was completed–during the Spring of 2023.