By Letty Bassart

	Albert Einstein, in a whimsical moment

When I began the Flower Chronicles, I was adamant that this work was unlike all other pieces about flowers.  When asked to describe it, I wrote things like, ‘It is about the precision of the middle finger and the audacity of the pinky toe.’  The irony, of course, is that the book that inspired me to enter the studio was written by a 1950’s housewife on a quest for context and place. God forbid anyone connect it to the work of someone like Georgia O’Keeffe.

A year later, dusting off the pages of my partner’s coffee table book, the very one I had fully rejected, I smile widely, and am forced to acknowledge the impact of this 20^th century artist’s work, not to mention the determination with which she set out to magnify details.  

It seems more often than not that edgy is a compliment while subtle implies a lack of risk, this sort aesthetic often leading to impressive MTV-style collages and hugely multi-media undertakings.  Does the current quest for edge limit our possibilities?  In our desire for new-ness, do we miss the point entirely?

I recently learned that Albert Einstein’s E=mc², initiated by his fascination with the nature of light itself, contained no new information.  The innovation was in his synthesis of past discoveries, his quest to simplify the apparently un-simplifiable, the eloquence of a single equation described in three pages. 

I am humbled, encouraged, and inspired by history.  I fell in love with words and letters watching my mother type fervently; her compensation, a penny a word, our reward, the ever obvious food on the table and surprisingly untraditional lullabies from the most archaic of technologies.  It has taken many years to concede that my mother’s dexterity and innate sense of “dogged endurance” (also an Einstein quote) reside within my DNA more readily than the distinctly crooked tooth we share or the pinky toe that lies oddly on its side.