Murmurations have been interesting me lately. If you don't know what a murmuration is in nature, it's when a flock of birds, a herd of land grazers, pod of dolphins, fish or otherwise, all move as if they are one body. In sync. Harmony. And breath. The act in front of your eyes is absolutely beautiful. 

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After the ice storm in my home town passed this last winter, there was an abundance of wood and felled trees. There is still an abundance actually, sitting on the side of my neighbors driveways lining the roads, ready to be turned into... wood chips. Dun. Dun. Dun. Oh the pain. It pains me. To know that oil and gas, man hours, and precious energy will be spent grinding up what could be beautiful sculptures, tables, chairs, etc. 

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I decided to make a lamp from a branch that I found in my grandmother's backyard after the ice melted with the murmuration idea in mind. The invisible fields of energy living between tree branches made visible with yarn. A scene you might see from an airplane window: tree tops swaying both gently and violently together in murmurations while the wind does what it does. I've never researched this, but intuitively I think I know that the wind's murmurations imparted into the trees trunks and branches help to create the grain patterns you see when you are looking at a milled piece of wood. How could it not? The wind bends the branch, tension is applied, stress creates a ripple onto the water moving through the trunk, and then woodworkers call those patterns - "tigering" or bird's eye" in maple, or "cathedral grain" when it looks like a wave or windows in a gothic church building ... the poetry continues and expands.

 

Oh! "Kaleidoscoping". There's another fun one. Holographic. Iridescent. Crazy stuff when you think about it all. 

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I have a feeling this will be the first of many "murmuration" lamps.