Everything has it. Artists love it. Throw in “patterns, forms or shapes” and you have a recipe for a diverse, colorful show. Las Laguna Gallery of Laguna Beach, CA, has put one together. You can see it here: Textures, Patterns, Forms or Shapes.

My piece in the show, Lotus Fractal, features texture and pattern. Here’s how it came about: I was walking the boardwalk portion of the Pintail Wildlife Drive in Cameron Parish, La. one October day. The wetland the boardwalk traverses features large fields of American lotus (Nelumbo lutea), and I have spent many a summer day photographing the huge, pale yellow flowers with their golden centerpiece. They look to me, for all the world, like untamed women waving at me, perhaps in recognition of a kindred spirit!

But by October, flowers have been supplanted by dead, brown leaves. As the plants go dormant for the winter, the stems dry and become rigid and form a shepherd’s crook at the top. Thus the leaves are held up off the surface of the water and droop to the side turned inside out. Only then can you see the incredible architecture of the underside of the leaves.

How do the channels and wrinkles and puckers and ribs you can see in Lotus Fractal serve the needs of the lotus plant? How does the underside of the leaf interact with the topside of the leaf, which is perfectly hydrophobic? I have no idea, but these are the kinds of questions my photographic observations lead me to ask. Maybe there will be a chapter in the book I’m working on* devoted to lotus leaves!

In the meantime, check out the Las Laguna Gallery’s online show until the 28th of August. This is Lotus Fractal‘s fourth juried show, I’m pretty sure. I should be able to look that up quickly, but I’m not that organized! Some day….

*Working title: Creation Considered: Creature Encounters of the 5th Kind. I don’t have a publisher yet and I’ve just begun, so don’t hold your breath. But I have begun! It will be a book of photographs and writings with a spiritual point of view.