Chilkoot Lake, Alaska
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
With summer comes travel, and the SOF staff is on the move. The beauty of Kate having an iPhone is that she occasionally sends the staff photos she’s taken from her travels. I find these shared gems give an insight into what she sees at a book event, an awards ceremony, or when she’s on vacation.
With a breathtaking backdrop like this, how can one not be inspired to come back and look for the story in other connected landscapes — which reminds me of our looking into Belgian bloembinder Daniel Ost and his sense that flowers and trees are not merely decorations but are a way for him to convey a sense of meaning through his work. From a piece in The New York Times Magazine:
“…flowers are connected with spirituality. In the West we use them in a purely decorative way, but in Japan they work with the flower’s soul to express not just beauty but ideas like death. … I’ve always wanted to show flowers in their optimum moment, but now that I’m older, I also want to explore the beauty of dying.”
(photo: Kate Moos)
