iPhone in the Snow

We have had a snowy winter here in NYC.  It was messy underfoot on Monday, but beautiful above, so I took out my iPhone and began to capture what I saw:

Broadway and 95th Street

On the way to the subway.

Subway entrance on Broadway and 96th Street.

View from The Ground Floor Pilates studio.

Later, outside of CVS at 96th and Amsterdam Ave.

Ferocious Hail Storm

Our garden is trashed.

Shortly after we arrived at our farm on Friday, the skies darkened and our hill was pelted with hail.  Usually a hail storm only lasts a few minutes, and these were really big hailstones, so I ran for my camera.  Turns out that I didn’t have to run.  There was wave after wave of hail, followed by torrential rain.  I began to wonder whether the Rapture people were right after all – that the end of the world had arrived!!

You can see the hailstones bouncing around.  The plants in the pots are being pummeled.  They are REALLY big hailstones!  The storm lasted about 45 minutes.  It seemed like a lifetime.  When my husband and I walked around to survey the damage, the grass crunched under our feet.  The asparagus in the vegetable garden looked fringed on top.  Any late tulips were history.  The leaves of the large maple tree overlooking the patio are now all over the patio.  Bits of leaves were glued to our windows.

Look at the size of these hailstones!

The hail was deepest on the patio and on the soil and mulch in the garden.

In some places, the runoff was like a river.  There are piles of mulch, soil and debris all over our lawn.

The oddest thing is that a mere mile from us, there was a little hail and no damage.  Mother Nature can be very arbitrary.  As we bemoaned the fact that we had just planted giant zinnias and other annuals grown from seed, all destroyed, I had one thought.  In the Midwest, people were looking at their HOMES totally destroyed.  We were looking at plants.  You can replant flowers and foliage.    Maybe it wasn’t such a calamity after all.

My Photographs at Art/Omi Benefit

A year or so ago I photographed a beautiful sculpture created by architect/sculptor Tarik Currimbhoy for the Fields Sculpture Park at the Omi International Arts Center in Columbia County, NY.  The work is called Ellipse and is made of white marble that has no hardware joining the pieces together.  Here is what it looked like in autumn:

Isn’t this fabulous?  There are 3 entryways, each facing a totally different view of the field and the swamp.

Now, the benefit.  Tarik is now on the board of Art/Omi and is establishing a music scholarship in the memory of Rajshekhar Parikh.  I am honored to be one of the seven artists invited to participate in an exhibit of our work.  The sale of the artwork will benefit the scholarship fund and the artists will get a percentage of the proceeds.  This is quite thrilling and fair, since so frequently artists are simply asked to contribute work with no understanding of what it takes to create it.  (The only tax deduction for an artist is the value of the materials used to create the work.)

The opening party, which should be great fun, is Friday, April 9th from 5-9, and the work will be available for purchase through April 11th.  If you are interested in information so that you can join in the festivities, please send me an email through this blog or my website and I will forward an invitation to you.