Tag Archives: autumn

Autumn Fires

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For the third bulletin board, I went with this only tangentially related poem from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Children’s Garden of Verses, which I think is delightful, although it is probably not the least bit relevant to children in Arizona in 2026: it’s far too hot for bonfires, summer isn’t pleasant and it isn’t really over, and we have plenty of flowers in the fall and even in the winter. Our seasons are less defined and less predictable than anything a Scottish poet in the 19th century could have imagined.

But it’s a catchy little piece.

To save time, I used markers instead of cutting the letters from paper. I tried to make the letters look kind of fiery and it seems to have succeeded. Not sure about the smoke. People seem astonished about me writing freehand but it’s so much easier than cutting. These were pretty good markers—they have to be to draw on black paper.

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Autumn Desert Flowers II: Tansy Aster

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The colors of butcher paper stocked by my school change occasionally, but this beautiful lavender has never come up before. I was so excited to see it, and I knew that I would have to make this tansy aster, a common wildflower in southern Arizona. So even though I didn’t start with a theme, a theme emerged. Sort of.

After finishing both flowers I thought it would be fun to give them both little interpretive signs like it was a botanical garden. I chose the name most commonly used here in Tucson, another common name, and the scientific name (this one is Machaeranthera tanacetifolia) and I used paint pens for the lettering to save time.

I’ll save back a few feet of lavender paper for the future. No doubt, when this roll is gone, it won’t come up again for a decade or so.

Autumn Desert Flowers I: Mexican Bird of Paradise

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Creating 3 bulletin boards that all matched was starting to feel kind of burdensome, and it occurred to me that the bulletin boards don’t all have to go together, so instead of starting with a grand theme, I decided to start with one idea. This is the Mexican Bird of Paradise (Latin name Caesalpinia pulcherrima) aka the Peacock Flower (aka a lot of other things). It’s a ubiquitous ornamental here in southern Arizona, but it seems to be native to the Caribbean, and is specifically associated with the Barbados, but also with Suriname. I couldn’t find a definitive place of origin, but I didn’t look very hard either.

Anyway, they’re very showy and stunning, very complex blossoms. The flowers begin to bloom from the bottom of the pyramid of buds and as each layer shrivels a new layer opens.

This image already seems to resonate with its audience. There are 2 Mexican Bird of Paradise bushes in the courtyard where the bulletin boards hang, and most of the kids figured it out. The actual flowers are less than an inch wide; these paper simulacra are probably 20 times larger than life.

Summoning the Autumnal Spirit Triptych 2025, with Great Horned Owl and Amanita

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This one took 5 days! I mismeasured the letters in both directions so you really have to view the first 2 of these boards together because the text cut off in the middle and spills over.

Sometimes art is about forging forward regardless of existing mistakes.

Last week the Coyote and I were skinny dipping when suddenly the sky opened up in a much needed monsoon burst, so we heaved ourselves out of the pool and took cover under the porch, from which vantage porch we observed a juvenile great horned owl appearing to dance in the rain for 5 or 10 minutes.

The Coyote told me that this behavior is intended to keep their wings from being saturated so they can still fly even though they’re wet, but it did look like a lot of fun. Joyful.

I actually made the third panel first, and I absolutely delighted myself with every detail.

I was almost finished Friday and I potentially could have stopped but there was too much blank space, so I came back and added the stars and the blooms.

The feathers and the brooms all have 3-dimensional details that the kids may very well destroy but that’s what happens when you make ephemeral art for elementary students.

Fall Festival Bulletin Board 2

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And here is the sister bulletin board. It’s slightly bigger than the original and I definitely wish I had had more time to fill it up.

I also wish I’d had time to make the stems curlier.

Anyway, let it not be said that I didn’t do my part in preparing the school and the students for autumn.

Fall Festival Bulletin Board 1

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OK, so as mentioned in my last post, I now have control of the second bulletin board again, and finally I had the chance to coordinate the 2, in this case with a harvest theme: gourds and mushrooms. I don’t know. That’s what came out.

I’m making 2 separate posts even though they’re linked.

I’m pretty happy with the gourds and mushrooms, but I would have been happier if I had more time. I lost a couple days because the AC has been out since May and it’s kind of unbearable in there most of the time, and then I was called away to Kansas for family stuff. So I really jammed to get these up in 2 days.

If I had had more time I would have made more gourds and mushrooms. Some of them I spent a lot of time making and some I dashed out, but they all look OK, I think.

Of course, Arizona is experiencing record-breaking heat, and even Kansas is pretty warm and not at all autumnal.

Great Horned Owls, Autumn 2021

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Owls say, “Time to get spooky!” Just kidding. Owls say, “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” all night long

Aside from the logistical issue of having to use small sheets of black construction paper to make up for the weird lack of large rolls of black butcher paper (sorry, but light gray just won’t cut it for Halloween/All Souls/Dia de los Muertos season; this is the dying of the light we’re talking about here, not the general malaise of the light) this one came out pretty close to perfect.

I was inspired by the vast number of great horned owls in this neighborhood; I never see them, but I have frequently heard them and occasionally found their feathers. They’re definitely around. I’ve even heard them in a tree on the school property, although I used for my model and different, more photogenic, and creepier tree two blocks down the street.

Weirdly, none of the pictures came out great, but I did get some nice details of the owls, which I might put on Instagram. You can find me @hubris_and_smoke. It’s mostly photos of flowers but there’s other fun stuff too.