Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2006SYR15
Purchase Details
11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.
You also receive…
An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.
Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.
Patches of Garden
poster information
Description
Patches of garden
line the porches and sidewalks
cultivating joy
This poem was inspired by gardening I did last summer and by the gardens of other people in the neighborhood. I decided to put some flowers in my front yard, and I was also taking walks through the neighborhood, looking at what other people had done with their gardens, and appreciating those efforts.
I live on the North Side. So I went to Hafner's, in North Syracuse, and picked out plants and cleaned up the yard a bit. I'm a renter, and that's something that renters don't often do. Afterwards I started realizing how much of a difference it makes in a neighborhood when people keep things clean and orderly, even if you're not in the most beautiful home. You're doing a service to the community by taking care of your own little patch of ground.
The porch is actually my next-door neighbor's porch. From my porch, I would see my neighbors tending to the plants. So when I got this assignment, I looked around at quite a few places to find a garden to illustrate, but I just felt that this one was beautiful.
A lot of times, when I'm working on an assignment, I'll try to paint images of Syracuse and integrate them into my work. The city has some beautiful qualities—beautiful architecture, beautiful nature. Often it ends up that I paint views or scenery that I see everyday, like my back yard, or a view of the street. Whatever I see a lot, I tend to find a way to integrate it. I like to find the beautiful aspects of something that everybody else sees as normal.