Stephanie Hilvitz

Reciprocity...Day 107

home for the weekend...putting together milkweed seed packets for the opening of SEED:Dispersal

artist reception Friday, June 17 at the Dairy ARTS Center

there are more than 70 varieties of milkweed seed

'reciprocity' my taking huge inspiration from the story of the Monarch butterfly and giving back in both my art and understanding and milkweed seeds for you to take and plant and spread

the cabinet of curiosity holding my specimens 

grateful to be home, a gentle rain and window rattling thunder, short lived

grateful to return home to the air full of lilac

grateful for the coming weekend of time spent with mothers and daughters

Imprint...Day 93

Specimens...capturing the relationship between milkweed and the Monarch

Imprint: come to recognize (another animal, person, or thing) as a parent or other object of habitual trust

the Monarch caterpillar is completely dependent upon the milkweed plant as its sole food source

Specimens....for SEED:Dispersal at the Dairy ARTS Center in Boulder this June

grateful for the abundance of visibility of this issue in the world

on another subject...grateful for many buckets to shelter tall and exposed blooms from the possible 14" of snow predicted

Purple and Pods...Day 85

bringing the spring in

purple and pods

so much travel coming up...will savor weekends in the studio

grateful for yoga today, grateful for a walk with the dogs to counter a stressful work day

grateful for a lovely dinner with mom and Lisa and neighbors

Specimen...Day 84

found a perfect bottle to house my 'specimen' work and happy to find MORE at the flea market,

will be filled with intent to disperse and multiply and place focus on the pod

grateful for ideas, grateful for this beautiful spring weather that is helping to germinate these ideas

Disperse...Day 83

gathering...containing...creating specimens

off milkweed seeds/fluff for SEED:Dispersal

bringing attention to the real problem with these seeds on the wind, finding no place to land, to grow...they can disperse but cannot take root

Mark Guttridge of Ollin Farms most eloquently describes the effects of glyphosates HERE

I heard a series of interviews with the Hugh Grant, the head of Monsanto...sadly, never were the effects of glyphosates mentioned or discussed

these tiny beautiful seeds hold in them the future of the Monarch butterflies and this unique and magical migration

grateful for the opportunity to bring this story to light

More Vessel...Day 80

more pods...potent little bundles of life

love too this experimentation of plaster, paint and wax, use it often to photograph, can't seem to duplicate it

looking forward to SEED:Dispersal to see all the art based on seeds/pods and the dispersal of art and ideas

quick sketches, playing with water color and adding opaque white

my studio mates

grateful for this space, grateful for PODcasts to listen to....

Vessels...Day 79

beautiful containers...pods of many intricate shapes and forms

the seeds of new growth, patiently waiting for warm soil

not mine of course...these are part of my cabinets of curiosities

grateful for the sketchbook and photography fodder

Milkweed Pod News...Day 75

I've planted milkweed pods for several years but have not had any luck with them coming up. This year...at the end of the season I noticed milkweed pods in the garden! They were very small pods, but milkweed none the less...did not notice them in the wild growth of the garden. Will watch more attentively this season. While Colorado is quite far west of the major migration route, there still are strays that find themselves in our neighborhood so we should do all that we can.

Very interesting article came my way via facebook in regard to the possible extinction of the Monarch's due to dwindling milkweed populations. This new idea...milkweed airbnb's...proposed by the Environmental Defense Fund.

The basic idea would be to create an exchange where investors and conservationists could pay farmers, ranchers, and other landowners to set aside protected space filled with milkweeds along the monarchs' migration route.

grateful that the plight of this tiny butterfly is on the radar of our country as well as Mexico and Canada

grateful for facebook friends that get me

grateful for Friday, Friday yoga and the weekend!

Protecting the Vessel...Day 52

So interesting, that perhaps the trigger of my 2 week oddyssey of hives could indeed be due to the Monsanto poison brew of glyphosates that infiltrates the cells of plants and mammals and is directly involved in the destruction of milkweed populations that sustain the Monarch butterfly. 

I may have wondered through an area that had been sprayed in Boulder County...

I gather these beautiful pods for the creation of the Vessel Goddess that will be part of SEED at the Dairy Center for the Arts this summer

creating packets of milkweed seeds that will be distributed in a cross pollination project of arts and sciences in Taos NM as well as Boulder this summer.

grateful for feeling well...for walking in the cold breeze

Becoming the Vessel...Day 42

a joyFULL day in the studio today...a bit hyped up on the prednisone I was given for my crazy hive issues (it's working!!!)

working on the new Goddess, the Vessel for SEED at the Dairy

thought I share some behind the scenes to see just how this day progessed
grateful for feeling oh so much better!!

and grateful for my mom who ran home to bring me a hairnet to harness the milkweed seed