During a recent visit to New York City I went to the Society of Illustrators. Despite living in the city for three years, I had never heard of this museum. The newest exhibit featured botanical art. Who doesn’t like to look at drawings of plants?
It’s a small museum on the eastern side of Central Park, surrounded by stately apartment buildings and schools. On the third floor is a bar and a handsome patio. Between the two on brick walls hang illustrations of plants.
The drawings are astounding! These dramatic tulips, created from chalk and charcoal, look like a photograph. I felt certain I could reach out and pick up these gleaming red onions, even though they are simply watercolors on paper.
I kept returning to the only two illustrations that featured decay. This persimmon leaf (scroll down) radiates warmth and life despite the signs of infection.
My favorite from the collection is this autumn leaf, made entirely from just colored pencils. What?! How can colored pencils create such texture and vibrancy? I was pleased to learn that the artist, Crystal Shin, is from Seattle. No wonder the deteriorating leaf looked familiar; they regularly litter sidewalks and trails in October. Even now, I can’t believe that’s just a drawing.
After I moved on from this leaf, I stopped in front this drawing of wild blackberries, another common sight here in Seattle during the late summer. I heard an excited voice approach me: It was the artist, Catherine Park! She couldn’t believe that her piece was in the exhibition. “I’m so happy to see people looking at it,” she said, beaming. She was gracious enough to answer my question about how long it took her to create this.
“Six months,” she answered with what sounded like mild disappointment.
“Six months!” I exclaimed. That was far beyond my expectations.
Catherine then explained the process behind her work (which entirely aligns with what she said about the piece here). Her enthusiasm for light, detail, and the lifecycle of the blackberry made me smile.
That chance encounter with a professional botanical artist was a potent reminder that creation takes time. Destruction is fast. Creating beauty—even the beauty in decay—takes time, planning, and energy. What a way to honor the fullness and blessings of life. The act of creating is time well spent.
“Do you know who Duncan Sheik is?” my spouse asked me.
“Yes, of course,” I answered. It was unfair of me to expect him to remember my tastes in music before he and I met.
“He died.”
“What?!”
So he must’ve had a sense that Duncan Sheik meant something to me.
His was the first concert I ever attended, somewhere in Los Angeles when I was in college. (I remember Paula Cole, who hopefully found her cowboy at some point, opened for him.) It’s true, I did like “Barely Breathing”, though I soon recognized that this pop song was an anomaly in his work. (His album, Humming, is what kept me a fan.) I ultimately bought five of his albums, which means Duncan Sheik was part of my life soundtrack for 12 years: College, medical school, and psychiatry residency.
The New York Times obituary for him is syrupy. Sure, maybe he was “soft-spoken and cerebral”, but “heart-rending melodies” and lyrics “[brimming] with existential angst”? Really?
I will concede that the obituary writer’s comment resonated with me:
[Barely Breathing], along with so much of his work from the ’90s, really strikes a chord with my Gen X soul; it’s a reminder of that moment when we twentysomethings really did think that authenticity would rule the world…
To my ear, his layering of orchestral string instruments with guitars, electronic beats, and his voice naturally led him to composing music for Broadway. I haven’t seen any of them, but now hope to.
I remember it was with great reluctance that I threw away the shirt I got from his concert. It had difficult colors: The shirt was brown with cyan text and featured his unsmiling face. After years of wear, the seams were unravelling and there were holes in the armpits.
Destruction is fast. I hope Duncan felt that his time creating music was time well spent.
Maria Yang, MD 