natural selection

WE ARE NOT living in an age of subtlety. "Reality" shows abound on television where the most obnoxious, outrageous and gaudy get all the attention. No publicity, is bad publicity anymore, even for State Dinner crashers and sons of reality show wannabe parents that hold the media aloft chasing spaceship balloons for hours on end. Christmas decorations have accordingly become gaudier and gaudier in large part due to florists and department store visual display artists trying to outdo each other in public displays. That's how they sell it—build a gaudy spectacle and they will come. This is not how it should be done at home. Somebody forgot the caveat "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME" somewhere along the line. I remember hearing the mantra of a very successful florist — "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing." Not so, when decorating at home.

I CAN CERTAINLY see the m.o. in that credo, and I for one, can appreciate the glee in over-the-top decorations. There's something about gaudy American consumerist spectacle that gives me a particularly sick sort of comfort—it's as if you're not part of the game if you don't participate. More lights in more configurations than you thought humanly possible? The more, the merrier! Commercial-sized plastic blow-up yard ornaments that lie in misshapen piles while the owners are at work during the day? Not so much. It's like getting behind rubbernecking traffic in a 10-car pileup on the interstate. One just hopes they can get by without seeing a crumpled mess, or even worse, a bloody scene, but you're still stuck in the slowed-to-a-standstill traffic. Commerce has overlaid the gentle quietness of nature.

WITHIN ITS ORIGINS, the tradition of the decorated tree began with a simple, some may say, superstitious, hope for the return to spring (as if the turning of the seasons was not a surefire thing). Nevertheless, a reverence for nature is slowly being welcomed back into decorating— bringing the ceremonial symbolism and true meaning of the decorated tree back to its noble origins. A beautiful symbol of the season is a glittery tree shaped from metal "twigs" and adorned with a subdued nod to the natural world in winter whites, tans and grays (above, right). The inclusion of animal ornaments; a polar bear, a mature deer and a small bird are indicative of what can be found in the market which pay homage to endangered species. It's as if we're grasping for an apology to the natural world for what we've done to it. Aside from being visually assaulted at every turn, it is becoming more and more apparent that we are destroying our own natural environment. We have a lot to learn from the pristine natural world (both flora and fauna) in its utter grace and simplicity. No matter how breathtakingly awesome the size of its vista, the natural world, as resilient as it is, is still ultimately fragile when you look at the underlying ecosystem. Nature depends on a complex system of co-habitation and synchronization and it is less and less able to cope with the destruction wrought by humans and the waste and byproducts of industrial "civilization." Pollution comes in too many forms.

MORE AND MORE one can find natural-themed ornaments— made from eco-friendly materials (or at least not plastic or resin). Some of the first ornaments I made as a kid were from a kit my mother bought me made of felt cutouts sewn together and glued with sequins and trim, similar to the felt reindeer ornament here (but much less sophisticated, of course) that seemingly dances among the (wooden, laser-cut) snowflakes (above, left). The Germans are most famous for their glass ornaments, but are also consummate woodcrafters. The two wooden  hand-carved folk art span trees (right) are carved, amazingly enough, from a single piece of linden wood with carefully-cut shavings curled upward to form their branches—works of art in themselves that need no ornamentation. The tableau is rounded out with a couple of hand-blown, metallic-finished glass ornaments, a birch bark folded star ornament, sweetgum tree fruits painted silver (given to me by my friend Julia Neville) and a pewter leaf ornament.

THE IMAGE (at left— click on to enlarge) illustrates my point more succinctly and poignantly as only art can do. I am thrilled to have permission to show the work of a very talented artist named Jaime Zollars. In the description of this piece by Jaime, it is succinctly said: "This image of forest creatures making the best of a bleak situation illustrates hope and the true spirit of the holiday season." In remembering that true spirit, I hope this gives one pause to stop and take time to remember that nature is ultimately responsible for the bounty of the season. Look to it to inspire and inform your holiday decorations. This method to our holiday madness is something we can all hope to achieve. And by doing so, we rejoin nature on a warm wind of change. 

WINTER WISHES |  This metal wire tree from Anthropologie is coated with glittery beads and is hung with a subdued color palette of ornaments: Czechoslovakian beaded ornaments, silvery gray mercury glass baubles and German glass-glittered snowflakes demonstrate the simple composition of this tableau. Beautifully-rendered animal ornaments stand watch and remind us that their environment and ours are essentially one-in-the-same and has to be taken into account for the survival of all. 

SNOWFLAKE DANCER | The artfully, beaded and stitched felt reindeer is from Homegoods. The laser cut wooden snowflakes are from West Elm (large), Target (medium) and Anthropologie (small). 

GERMAN FOLK ART | These wooden folk art span trees are carved from a single piece of linden wood curl by curl and layer by layer with a method developed in the 1930's by talented German craftsmen (these are from Straco and purchased at Homegoods). The two handblown glass ornaments have a beautiful rich crackled "tarnished" silver finish were bought at an arts festival in Atlanta, the birch bark folded star ornament was purchased from Martha by Mail a few years back. The sweetgum tree fruit is spray-painted silver and the pewter leaf ornament came from a shop in the North Georgia mountains. 

©2009 DARRYL MOLAND | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED,

collecting and styling by Darryl Moland, 
photography (top, right) Harold Daniels Studio / 
assisted by Shawn May, 
(middle, left and bottom, right) Darryl Moland.
Artwork (bottom, left) by Jaime Zollars.
 

the secret life of leaves

Deciduous \De*cid"u*ous\
Falling off, or subject to fall or be shed, at a certain season,
or a certain stage or interval of growth, as leaves
(except of evergreens) . . . [1913 Webster]

THERE  IS  A   "reason for the season" as they say. You can look at it a number of ways. The holiday season's visual focal point is the decorated evergreen tree, around which everything else revolves in most cases—even in households that don't celebrate Christmas per se. It is also a reverent celebration of birth and a hope for rebirth of man's spirit. In any case, I prefer to meld the disparate (or are they?) belief systems into one. All are symbolic of new life and rebirth in a profound way—and pay homage to their roots, no matter how popular custom has been morphed to fit one belief system or another. Its obvious to me that the resonance of the first beliefs and rituals involving decorating a tree of any sort is at the core of our central belief in nature and who we are as part of the natural world.

THE  INCREASING  prevalence of all sorts of leaf ornaments has been unmistakable in the past few years. It's no doubt because of the focus on the environment with concerns of global warming (or climate change, as it inexplicably became termed). Broadly, it is reconciliation between man and nature—an atonement for an unbridled growth (due to greed) of man's command over nature. The human race is realizing the awesome power of forces beyond our control and being put in our place—as a working part of the natural world, not the controller of it. Global crisis involves more than the obvious weather shifts and such. We have to educate ourselves with how our food is produced. Meat farming and food crops have already been seized by large corporations and industrialized and genetically modified, producing disease and making farmers into indentured servants. A lot of farmers are forced to not even save their seeds! They have to buy the new line of genetically modified ones for next season or face bankruptcy. And the very essence of life—water is being traded as a commodity as I write. To quote a line from a well-remembered 70's TV commercial, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." The product it advertised was doing just that. I'll side with Mother Nature and have real butter from grass-fed and hormone-free cow's milk, thank you very much.

DECORATING  an evergreen tree with deciduous leaves (or representatives of such), is a meld of the processes of life and death (which is deciduous) with the hope of everlasting life (which is evergreen). When ideas come together like that, we come to the realization that everything is connected in nature and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I  WISH  LIFE, in general, could be more like that. We all get caught up with the end result instead of recognizing that the journey is the most important part. In my view, being open to a myriad of ideas and taking the time to absorb and learn from them are what makes life exciting—no matter how scary or messy it might get. And that's definitely something to think about—something that carries your spirit back home—to being a humble and reverent part of something bigger than yourself—Mother Earth.

LEAF COLLECTION | (Above, clockwise from bottom left): A golden maple leaf with a tiny jingle bell attached from the Martha Stewart Everyday/Golden Traditions line at Kmart, a mercury glass maple leaf, a bronze leaf with a tiny acorn attached from the Martha Stewart/Golden Traditions line at Kmart, a glass ivy leaf, and a large silver leaf from Pottery Barn—all atop a 100% recycled fiber paper/soy ink book-bound journal from greenroom eco / clementine paper, inc. at Target.

©2009 DARRYL MOLAND | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
collecting, photography and styling by Darryl Moland