From my original WordPress Simplicity Blog on September 19, 2005

What is beautiful to you?

I was recently interviewed by a German magazine regarding the beautiful objects that I own … I realized that ownership ceases to make things beautiful. 

As I look for designed objects in my studio that “signify beauty” I find many examples, yet none of them are entirely beautiful to me. I find beauty in freshness and fragility — two qualities that the modern designed object is not allowed to possess. Once an object is acquired, it eventually becomes stale in your apartment; were an object to be crafted as to break upon the slightest touch, it could not be sold. For these reasons I find my beauty in nature, where every item has a purpose and a life cycle that is perfectly natural.

The moth: On a walk around my home, I saw this beautiful white moth dying on the paved road. The contrast between the whiteness of nature, and the darkness of manmade materials — combined with the two deaths — one of the moth, the other of the ground that lay beneath the pavement. This complex, yet simple moment of the lightness of life to soon vanish into the dark … rendered in a black and white palette represents the kind of beauty that cannot be owned, but only experienced.