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  • Guy Dill Roundabout

    2018 < View Public Art Projects Guy Dill Roundabout 2018 Permanent Art Project

  • A Plant’s Life

    Joanna Vazquez < Back A Plant’s Life By Joanna Vazquez I don’t understand how others look at this world and know what they have to do in life. It is like they have a purpose; do we all have a purpose? Where do we even come from? Where do we at any point come from? Can anyone explain why I need to go into this world and carry on with a daily existence I won't ever concede to? Where do I, by any chance, come from? More often than not, I feel like there is no reason for living. We spend our lives stuck in this soil, we never move, yet others are so persuaded this is an excellent way of life. I realize I ought to be more joyful to be a piece of something; however, I am not because I don't have the foggiest idea. I'm on this soil, no place to go watching the days pass endlessly, but then I don't have a choice; however, it is my life, right? We will die anyway; there are stories about how humans remove us whenever they feel Like it; eventually, we will die off when the winter comes. It isn't like I would be missed or anything. When the leaves fall, we fall. I guess the upside to things is no one ever comes out as often. I used to hear stories about people running around them, and we dance; everyone dances with the wind. They talk about how exciting it is to be a plant. Coming into this world, I've seen nothing but had things don't even get me started when the dogs use the bathroom on us! It is so disgusting. What's considerably more sickening is me, why I'm so frizzy all over. Why is the top of me so big while the bottom of me is so thin? I feel so disgusting sometimes, and I hate it. I need to be content with life and myself; however, it is difficult to feel lonely. I don't relate to any other plant. I have tried, but now I don't even bother. Some days I feel fantastic, happy, thrilled and then other days I feel really sad. I don't understand; the world is grey, and to the other plants, the world is gloomy. I wish I had the chance to see the world in that way. But I frequently ask myself, why me? Am I just not good enough? It would be nice to stand up tall and appreciate the sun and how amazing the sky looks, and how being a part of this world is a beautiful experience. I try and try, but I am just a plant; I have no means to reproduce as I’m supposed to; I don’t have a gender. Why I’m I the only one like this? I know my purpose should be to provide oxygen for other living things, but there is no point in doing so because what do I get in return? Dog poop. At some point, when I die, I will become another plant that does the same thing over and over again. As the days have gone on, I've tried to be more positive. And as the days continued, I've found this to be more pointless, but I am trying. Trying to be positive makes me feel better. It makes me feel like maybe I have a purpose, and there is hope. I haven't felt hope in a long time. Lately, days have seemed better; I've tried to make friends, and I mean, I am trying. Having a friend makes me feel happy for once. And as the days will continue, I will try and find my—purpose in this life. Previous Next

  • #CountMeIn Poster Project

    2020 < View Public Art Projects #CountMeIn Poster Project 2020 Temporary Art Project As part of the larger #CountMeIn Census project, artist Jane Szabo photographed the community in and around the BLVD Cultural District. These portraits became the exhibition “I am Here” which can be seen in the storefronts of the businesses along Lancaster Blvd.

  • Photography: Beyond the Surface

    Up Photography: Beyond the Surface Various Artists Solo exhibitions: Matthew Finley Rob Grad John Peralta Melanie Pullen Christopher Russell Joni Sternbach Rodrigo Valenzuela Site specific installation: Kira Vollman Selections from the Permanent Collection The Lancaster Museum of Art & History (MOAH) and the Lancaster Museum and Public Art Foundation (LMPAF) invite Antelope Valley residents and visitors to its newest exhibition Beyond the Surface , a survey of contemporary photography. The exhibit will be on display November 9 through January 12, and the opening reception will be November 9 from 4-6 p.m. Beyond the Surface features the work of eight photographers, including a survey of Melanie Pullen’s work in the Main Gallery, Joni Sternbach’s Surfland series in the East Gallery, This Too Shall Pass by Matthew Finley in the North Gallery, Rob Grad’s Finding Foreverland series in the Wells Fargo Gallery, work from Christopher Russel in the Moore Family Trust Gallery, photographic installation by Rodrigo Valenzuela in the South Gallery, along with sculpture by John Peralta, and 16mm , a site-specific installation, by Kira Vollman. Photography has long been associated with its ability to document reality. As a medium, photography has neatly satisfied the human need to search for objective truth. But truth is not objective. Like photography, the truth is crafted, manipulated, and enhanced. In the digital age, with the advent of augmented and virtual reality, the blurring of the line that separates real from unreal has reached an unprecedented level. Beyond the Surface examines these permeable boundaries. Its artists, who each utilize traditional photographic processes, challenge the viewer to look deeper and find a greater sense of truth that lies just beyond the images’ surface. MATTHEW FINLEY: THIS TOO SHALL PASS Matthew Finley creates conceptual portraits that connect with the viewer on an intimate and emotional level. By using the handcrafted photographic processes of tintype and ambrotype, Finley harkens back to the fixedness and inerasable quality of his own personal history. He explores instant film as a way to create portraits as original and authentic works of self-examination, capturing elusive, often fleeting moments of self-realization. In the series, This Too Shall Pass , Finley reflects on his personal journey of coming out as a gay man after being raised in a religious household where being gay was not accepted. Each Polaroid acts as a looking glass, through which the viewer experiences Finely’s “past selves.” His memories, though fuzzy and impressionistic, are a vulnerable look into his youth, realization of his sexuality, and the persistence of time. Shame, fear, and rejection slowly transform into love, desire, and belonging as Finley takes the viewer through his journey to self-acceptance. His goal is to share these memories, set free the ghosts that have haunted his past and connect with andencourage others who are going through similar experiences. Based in Los Angeles, Matthew Finley has been a photographer for ten years and is a core member of the Advanced Photography Critique Group at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. His work has shown in galleries on the West Coast, New Orleans, and Cincinnati. His images have also appeared in publications including Fraction Magazine, Shots Magazine, and Plates to Pixels where he won the Juror Award in The Visual Armistice 10th Annual Juried Showcase. ROB GRAD: FINDING FOREVERLAND Rob Grad’s sculptures are photo-based mixed media. Each piece consists of layered plexiglass parts that combine painting, drawing, and photography in a variety of ways that highlight or conceal various elements. Grad uses his work to address existential issues, using the physical layers of his sculptures to tackle the multiple layers of each issue. These meditations give the viewer license to consider their personal histories and discover their own truth. Finding Foreverland reflects on his interest in nature and the evolution of humankind’s relationship with it. Grad says, “from as far back as I can remember, I’ve always felt at home surrounded by nature. It’s wise. And patient. It was here before us, and will probably be here long after we’re gone.” The artist’s inspiration comes from a poem he wrote while reflecting on the wisdom and authenticity of a flower’s life. He saw the flower as delicate, but also unreservedly tough and unapologetic. Each sculpture in the series is a metaphorical character that struggles to grasp the wisdom that the flower embodies so effortlessly. The complementary environments cropped into hand painted gestural shapes, fused together with colors and text and assembled into a three-dimensional wall hanging brings each character to life. Grad is a current resident of southern California. He won First Place in the “New Media” Category of the Beverly Hills Art Show in 2015. He has shown his work in solo exhibitions at Fabrik Projects in Culver City, California, Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, California, and the Frame Gallery in Agoura, California, as well as in group exhibitions throughout southern California and Florida. Grad’s work was included in Art Basel, Switzerland, and at SCOPE Miami in 2017. JOHN PERALTA John Peralta is a self-taught artist whose unconventional style of sculpture incorporates iconic mechanical objects and high-tech materials to produce beautiful and complex representations. His interpretation of what is known in engineering terms as the exploded diagram, is original and demonstrates his imagination, technical expertise, and inventiveness. Peralta’s The Mechanitions Series reverses the fabrication process by taking utilitarian objects from the past and turning them into sculpture. Each three-dimensional exploded diagram makes each object feel vulnerable and approachable, while also creating a sense of reverence as the viewer takes in the intricate workings of the device. It allows the viewer to connect their own intimate experiences with the object, “like the typewriter your grandfather used in the war, your grandmother’s sewing machine, your father’s pocket watch, an iconic electric guitar,” as Peralta explains. These memories evoke a strong emotional connection to these objects and invite the viewer to imagine the vast memories each object holds. Peralta is a native of New Mexico and, although he now lives in Austin, Texas, his New Mexico family and heritage remain major influences on his life and work. Some of his earliest memories are of him and his brother pulling their red wagon around the neighborhood, knocking on doors, collecting broken radios, televisions, tape players – anything they could get their hands on – opening them up to see what made them work. He received no formal training in the arts, and it wasn’t until his thirties that he found his creative voice. Peralta is currently represented by the George Billis Galleries in New York and Los Angeles, Galerie Goutal in Aix-en-Provance France, Wally Workman Gallery in Austin, Gerald Peters Projects in Santa Fe, and Cinq Gallery in Dallas. He has had major exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, and Santa Fe. SCENE OF THE CRIME AND THE FASHION OF VIOLENCE : A SURVEY OF PHOTOGRAPHER MELANIE PULLEN Melanie Pullen’s photography tells a story in a single frame. Her work is cinematic and theatrical, often taking inspiration from film, photojournalism, forensic photography, and war journalism. This retrospective features work produced over the course of the last 14 years, including images from her High Fashion Crime Scenes, Violent Times, and Soda POP! series . Widely known for her work in the fashion industry, Pullen often uses fashion and media consumption as themes in her work to express the subtleties of her ideas. In her most extensive series, High Fashion Crime Scenes (2013-2017), Pullen outfits her models in haute-couture while staging them in re-enacted vintage crime scenes. The outfits distract and draw the viewer’s attention away from the gruesome scene of the crime. In Violent Times (2005-2009), Pullen focuses on the history of violence and its glamourization from early documentation in historical painting to the contrasting reality of modern photojournalism. Her series Soda POP! (2015) takes the idea of iconic soda ads and flips it on its head, making the viewer feel uneasy by placing the models in questionable nighttime settings. Melanie Pullen was born in New York City in 1975. She is self-taught and was raised in a family of photojournalists, publishers, and artists. Currently she lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Pullen has both exhibited and her work is in the permanent holdings of The Getty Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, California and Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Pullen has been recognized in numerous publications including Art Forum, Art Review, CBS News, CBS Radio, Elle, Fortune, GQ, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, New York Times Magazine, Nylon, Photo, Rolling Stone, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, and W. CHRISTOPHER RUSSELL: FALLS Christopher Russell analyzes the use of photography as technology has advanced over time. Originally, chemical photography was used to faithfully record people and places around the world, often feeling as if the viewer saw or experienced the actual place or thing firsthand. With the progression to digital photography, that sense of truth and reality is lost due to the complete malleability of images. Russell takes these digital images and emphasizes their changing position in the world from objective truth to subjective realities by scratching, cutting, folding and painting on the print, often creating his own narrative. In this series Falls , Russell fictionalizes a travelogue of a highly acclaimed Western photographer from the 1860s, Carleton Watkins. Russell travels to locations that Watkins previously photographed and photographs them himself, looking at them from the opposite end of a historical continuum. As he photographs each location, he manipulates the light that enters the lens to ensure they are fuzzy and hard to follow. As Russell scratches into the emulsion of the print, ghost-like patterns and fictional narratives begin to appear, warping Watkin’s original travelogue. Each of the images in this exhibition is “waterfalls.” This connecting theme is portrayed in a variety of ways throughout the work. It can take form in a sudden change in the flow of a pattern, an interpretation of a historical photograph of Willamette falls, or a muddle of ships approaching a watery precipice. Born in 1974, Russell received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Art Center College of Design in California. In 2009, he produced a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California. He has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Tokyo Institute of Photography in Japan, The Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida, Armory Center for the Arts in Los Angeles, California, White Columns in New York, New York, De Appel Arts Center in the Netherlands, Oakland Museum of California in Oakland, California, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California among others. He has published numerous critical articles in addition to being a featured subject of positive review by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Huffington Post, Artillery, Frieze, and ArtForum. JONI STERNBACH: SURFLAND This exhibition of tintype portraits was made during Sternbach’s visit to Oahu in December 2017 and 2018. It is part of a larger body of work, entitled Surfland, depicting various sized large format portraits of surfers, made on location around the globe. Surfland explores the real and conceptualized state of the surfer in the American imaginary. This project is a latter-day ethnographic document that unites different ages, genders, cultures and geographies through sport. The artist’s project places the everyday “soul surfer” (those who surf for the sheer pleasure of surfing) next to the elite, pro-surfing competitor just as they might exist in the water, waiting for the next wave. Sternbach’s work examines the ever-changing juncture between land and sea. This series was born out of her life-long desire to clarify the connection between humans and nature and her enduring love of the ocean. Surfland is an in-depth body of work that delves into the nature of identity and the character of portraiture. It’s an endeavor that can engage an entire community at any given time. What started as a local project on Long Island developed into a broader global study of people and place, sport and culture. Each tintype uses a liquid emulsion (collodion) that is poured onto the plate just minutes before it’s exposed and developed. All of Sternbach’s photographs are processed on site using a portable darkroom. The plates are fixed in daylight, allowing the image to be shared immediately with her sitters, which is crucial to her interaction and relationship with her subject. The attention to time spent making and evaluating each detailed collodion plate transforms the standard photographer/subject connection to a shared experience. Joni Sternbach is an artist and educator based in New York. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the School of Visual Arts and a Master of Arts degree from New York University and the International Center of Photography in 1987. She is an advisory board member and founding faculty at Penumbra Foundation in New York City, where she teaches wet plate collodion. Sternbach’s work is part of many international and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery in London, Joslyn Museum, MOCA Jacksonville, Nelson Atkins Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is the recipient of several grants including New York Foundation for the Arts and Creative Artists Public Service and Santo Foundation. Her monograph Surf Site Tin Type was published in the Spring 2015 by Damiani and is now sold out of the second edition. She is represented in Los Angeles by Von Lintel Gallery and in Paris, France by Galerie Hug. RODRIGO VALENZUELA: STATURE Rodrigo Valenzuela’s work in photography, video, and installation is rooted in contradictory traditions of documentary and fiction, often involving narratives around immigration and the working class. The artist often expands upon his own personal experiences, such as feelings of alienation and displacement, to inform universal concepts throughout his work. Valenzuela’s photographic technique involves orchestrating “performances for the camera,” which entails creating complex spaces by using his own photographic work as a backdrop against which additional installations are seamlessly built and rephotographed. The illusionistic quality of these spaces engage the viewer in questioning the way their own experiences influence their view on truth and reality. Valenzuela’s new series, Stature , is a progression of his previous studio constructions. In this series, the artist casts discarded electronics packaging in clay and concrete. These abstract constructions appear sterile, harsh, and sometimes even monsterlike, reminiscent of Brutalist architecture that was popular in the 1950s. None of these forms are glued or connected in any way. Instead, each object is precariously balanced in each arrangement. By taking these cast off items and making them permanent, structural and valuable, Valenzuela indirectly examines capitalist endeavors. Rodrigo Valenzuela was born in Santiago, Chile in 1982. He completed an art history degree at the University of Chile in 2004, then worked in construction while making art over his first decade in the United States. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Evergreen State College and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington. His work has been exhibited in a variety of museums and galleries including the Upfor Gallery in Portland, Oregon, New Museum in New York, New York, Laurence Miller Gallery in New York, New York, Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, Mexico, USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, Florida, Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery, Light Work in Syracuse, New York and the Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer in Vienna, Austria. He is a professor of art at the University of California, Los Angeles and represented by Klowden Mann Gallery in Los Angeles. KIRA VOLLMAN: 16MM Kira Vollman’s installation, 16mm , combines photography, painting, sculpture, and sound into an interactive experience. Vollman collects refuse from scrap yards, thrift and surplus stores, combining these disparate objects and synthesizing new meanings in this next phase of their life. As a visual and sound artist, Vollman sees each medium in constant interaction with one another, as “parts of a whole” rather than separate entities. Byincorporating music into her work, she curates a connection between the artwork, the viewer, and herself,orchestrating a moment of unity via interaction. 16mm is an abstract, static film clip which takes the viewer on a narrative of their own choosing. As the viewer travels down the 16 foot piece, the provided score, along with the photography, collage, and painting invites the audience to imagine themselves on an adventure, drama, or even a romance. Vollman muses, “Danger might be lurking around the next corner. There are escape routes. There is a serious pitfall at the center of your journey. Can you avoid it? The red threads are your lifelines.” The undulating frames draw viewers deeper as the plot thickens. The score for the piece is incorporated via steel frames that have been woven onto diffusion frames used in lighting for film. Kira Vollman is a Los Angeles based artist, curator, and vocalist. She is currently the owner, director, and curator of ARK Gallery Studios in Altadena, California. She is also a composer and vocalist for the group, Non Credo. Her artwork has been shown in galleries such as The Neutra Institute Museum & Gallery, Sylvia White Gallery, SOPA Studios Gallery, and MOAH:CEDAR. In 2017, she won first place in the All Media Exhibition at the Irvine Fine Arts Center in Irvine, California. November 9, 2019 - January 12, 2020 Back to list

  • Hysteria

    Up Hysteria Cudra Clover Silk painter and multimedia artist, Cudra Clover, is currently working on her Biomorphic Abstraction collection; the term "biomorphic" refers to symbolic structures or images that evoke naturally occurring forms such as plants, organisms, and body parts. Clover describes her work as creating new worlds on a microcosmic level. Mixing science and art, she researches pandemics, viruses, water, genetics, and plant cells. Clover creates her biologically inspired silk painting using camera technology, microscopes, projectors, biologists, and scientific photo research in her artistic method. Clover's silks paintings are a time-consuming and detailed process that she views as a meditative practice on living things, both real and imagined. Clover, in this process, uses the Japanese fabric dyeing technique, rozome, and elements of the Indonesian method of wax-resist dyeing, batik. She also incorporates aspects of French Serti, a silk painting method in which painters outline their designs with gutta or water-based resistance. In creating biomorphic abstract art, Clover attempts to provoke viewers to reflect on the natural world invisible to the naked eye and the overstimulation of technology in our everyday lives. June 5 – September 5, 2021 Back to list

  • Mela M | MOAH

    < Back Mela M Featured Structure Artist MANIFEST STRUCTURES FROM THE IMAGINAL is a new body of work from Mela that captures the artist's concept of "a provocative stream of consciousness as the past informs the present… to imagine multiple future possibilities." For Mela, these works bear witness to species-driven archetypes that result in how humans structure their lives on a physical and emotional level. The acceleration of science and technology have made these cultural systems increasingly complex, and these intricacies are reflected in Mela's structural representations. Mela strives to create visualizations of the different layers of human consciousness as imagined through multiple dimensions and timelines, and hopes her work challenges upcoming artists to draw inspiration from this not-so-common era. There are five distinct but related components from throughout the museum that make up MANIFEST STRUCTURES FROM THE IMAGINAL: a set of four acrylic paintings titled THE EVOLUTION OF THE OMEGATROPOLIS THROUGH FOUR SEASONS OF ARCHITECTONIC METAMORPHOSIS (lobby atrium), the hand-drawn CITYSCAPES OF ARCHITECTONIC METAMORPHOSIS FOR THE COMMON ERA (wall leading to the Jewel Box), a symbolic monument titled THE TOTEM OF THE MOON CASTLE (Jewel Box), and two architectural wooden sculptures titled THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE MOVES THROUGH IRREGULAR ANGLES IN A RISING WALL FROM AN ARCHITECTONIC CITY WITHOUT NAME OR PLACE OR TIME and THE WALL TEMPLE AT THE VANISHING POINT (Ralph and Virginia Bozigian Family Gallery). Mela M has an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California and an MFA from the Technological Institute of Art and Textile Design in Belarus. Her work has garnered national and international recognition with over twenty solo exhibitions, twenty-seven museum group exhibitions, and dozens of group shows in colleges and universities. She has been honored with numerous prizes and awards internationally, and her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Long Beach Museum of Art in California, the Southwestern Oregon College at Coos Bay in Oregon, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belarus. Previous Next

  • This is a Title 03 | MOAH

    < Back This is a Title 03 This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. This is placeholder text. To change this content, double-click on the element and click Change Content. Want to view and manage all your collections? Click on the Content Manager button in the Add panel on the left. Here, you can make changes to your content, add new fields, create dynamic pages and more. You can create as many collections as you need. Your collection is already set up for you with fields and content. Add your own, or import content from a CSV file. Add fields for any type of content you want to display, such as rich text, images, videos and more. You can also collect and store information from your site visitors using input elements like custom forms and fields. Be sure to click Sync after making changes in a collection, so visitors can see your newest content on your live site. Preview your site to check that all your elements are displaying content from the right collection fields. Previous Next

  • Nuri Amanatullah Crosswalk Mural

    2022 < View Public Art Projects Nuri Amanatullah Crosswalk Mural 2022 Temporary Art Project Watch the video of the painting of Nuri Amanatullah's crosswalk mural!

  • Structure Artist Pages (All) | MOAH

    Structure Artists Chelsea Dean Featured Structure Artist Lee mas Cinta Vidal Featured Structure Artist Lee mas Coleen Sterritt Featured Structure Artist Lee mas HK Zamani Featured Structure Artist Lee mas Jim Richard Featured Structure Artist Lee mas Kimberly Brooks Featured Structure Artist Lee mas Matjames Metson Featured Structure Artist Lee mas Mela M Featured Structure Artist Lee mas Stevie Love Featured Structure Artist Lee mas

  • Osceola Refetoff | MOAH

    < Back Osceola Refetoff Osceola Refetoff is a Canadian American visual artist and photojournalist renowned for his experimental use of infrared and pinhole photography to explore humanity's connection to the physical world. His work blends photojournalism and fine art, producing hyper-realistic yet surreal images. Osceola Refetoff is a Canadian American visual artist and photojournalist known for his experimental and innovative use of infrared and pinhole photography to document humanity’s ongoing relationship to the physical world. Across parallel careers in photojournalism and fine art, his diverse series are characterized by a hyper-realistic yet nuanced clarity, often yielding surreal, even dreamlike images. A graduate of New York University’s Master of Fine Arts Film Program, Refetoff’s motion picture background informs a distinctly cinematic approach to constructing engaging visual narratives that explore both time and space. Key to this practice is the artist’s old-school commitment to capturing his scenes “in-camera,” using archaic lens filters and handmade pinhole attachments that do not alter reality but instead offer new ways to see it. This foundationally realist approach combined with the magic of historical and alternative photographic processes yields a prismatic array of images that transform the external world into something both unchanged and extraordinary. Previous Next

  • Naida Osline | MOAH

    < Back Naida Osline Naida Osline is a photographer and filmmaker whose work merges conceptual and documentary practices. Balancing studio control with the unpredictability of public spaces, her imagery blurs the organic and synthetic, creating thought-provoking visuals. Since 2009, Osline has explored psychoactive plants in a long-term project examining their connections to creativity, morality, economics, legality, addiction, and spirituality. Naida Osline is a photographer and filmmaker whose work blends conceptual and documentary practices. Working with a non-linear approach, she often develops multiple projects simultaneously, allowing them to overlap and inform each other. Her working environment includes the controlled setting of the studio as well as the unpredictable conditions of public spaces. Osline’s photographic practice blurs the line between the organic and synthetic, creating imagery that is both captivating and thought-provoking. Since 2009, Osline has been developing a long-term project centered on growing, documenting, and altering psychoactive plants. This project examines these plants' complex relationship with human creativity, morality, economics, legality, addiction, and spirituality. The subject matter has manifested into different bodies of work that invites viewers to rethink their perspectives on these plants and to reflect on the lasting significance they have had, and continue to have, on human history and culture. Previous Next

  • The Alien

    Valeria Munoz < Back The Alien By Valeria Munoz I watch the surrounding seeds Destined to blow away in the unsheltered wind Until their own flowers grow are called weeds Later a witness to upheaval, my senses became dimmed While roots my own grew the environment impedes Yet still I continue, repaying to my parent a debt The journey along the wind lead only to where most others concede The soil is dry, as my lip nearly bleeds Yet merely feet away, there is another, not a weed But the ice plant, tough, flowerless, and low. Although just as alien as I, they thrive all the same Maintaining healthy soil, survival, and happiness the aim. I learn from my surroundings, that nothing is permanent Changes are made whether of my volition or not, ignoring as she pleads The past is washed away only by choice, likewise to torment Some issues solve as naturally as time, so to cleanse the sky wept With a renewal of mind, I felt the first leaf spreads And flowers formerly of nutrients bereft Thus the cycle continues, the habitat succeeds But not all is allowed, of happiness there is theft And the seeds, bulbs of hope, benefit from my petals fatigues There is beauty in their death, old memories away kept As the new proceeds Although still alien, at adapting I am adept My roots are set, even as weeds Previously on my own worth I slept But with time the life I make is all the mind needs Previous Next

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