Places everyone!

My relationship with daffodils is not very complicated, it’s a simple story of love at first sight.

It’s like how you know your favorite color or car or ice cream flavor — it just is. The fact that daffodils are blooming every year during my birthday probably helps, and yet while I like other springtime flowers such as crocuses and tulips they don’t inspire in me the same fascination and adoration as daffodils.

So it’s only natural that over the past few years they have become a large focus in my art as I strive to give them a year-round home on porcelain, to reflect their beauty and energy, to give voice to their individual personalities.  And it was also natural that for my birthday two years ago I sat down and made a daffodil tile as a gift to myself, and that piece continues to be one of my favorites.

The words themselves — “Places everyone, here comes the Sun!” — are an evolution that began with thinking about the things a flower might be excited about, and to me the daily arrival of the sun is the top answer. I’ve used “Here comes the sun” on a number of pieces, oddly never even thinking about the Beatles song of the same name until someone sang the line in front of me.

For my birthday-based twist I decided to add “Places everyone” to reflect the excitement and enthusiasm I personally try to bring to every day, a positivistic lead-the-way-into-the-light brand of optimism.

This piece hangs to the right of my bathroom sink so I see it every morning and evening, and it really does mirror my spirit in a fine narcissus fashion… I’ve come to see the piece and this specific daffodil as my personal avatar, using the image on my website and stickers and note paper and sticky notes and shopping bags and a pillow.

For me it’s more than just a reflection of my spirit since it also serves to give me hope and energy at the times I need it most.

And in that way it makes me think of one of Gandalf’s lines in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: “Look to my coming, at first light, on the fifth day. At dawn, look to the East.”

And that seems like a great line for the next daffodil piece I make!