The Sublime Color of Hazelnut

Yesterday I was on a job and the tree pollen, which normally does not affect me, was intense...coughing, sneezing, etc. I began to think about tree pollen and what good things we could create from something so bothersome...

I believe that everything in Nature has some use if only we can determine what it is. You know, like penicillin being developed from bread mold or something like that...(I am not sure about that example..)

So in the interest of learning to love tree pollen I found this unusual and interesting item in 'In Living Color' . It was written by Kate Smith and details the artistic use of tree pollen by Wolfgang Laib. 

Laib uses natural materials to create his works of art.  As Smith notes,

he is an artist who is "awed by nature and inspired by ritual...".

His gallery Sean Kelly Gallery writes that, " During the spring and summer months he collects pollen, including dandelion, hazelnut, pine, buttercup, and moss varieties, from the fields surrounding his home.

 He displays this laboriously gathered material in simple glass jars or sifts it through sheets of muslin directly onto the floor to create large, square fields of spectacular color."

Indeed, the color is sublime..but as Kate Smith writes, our response may be more on the sniffling and wheezing side of appreciation...nonetheless, it is a look at what a physician-turned-artist can do while living in the Black Forest of Germany.

Of course, another use of hazelnut pollen is to create hazelnuts: