Something to Make: Gift Boxes

While my cake was baking I looked at the mix box and decided to cover it with colored paper. Now it makes a  reusable (and reusable again) gift box. I used a heavy textured double-sided paper – it doesn't wrinkle, and completely covers the images on the box. These can be purchased in a stack and are surprisingly inexpensive...much less than the same amount of gift wrap. Now the box works for a book, or any number of other small gifts. (Like this book, with a packet of seeds..)

Next I covered a pot pie box. I found an old collection of scrap paper tucked away in a box of its own and (this is the uncanny part) the image on that box is a green Darwinian Tree of Life, surrounded by creatures of many kinds. That's a nice little echo, given my recent interest in Darwin. (I covered that box many years ago: can you sense a bit of an obsession?)

It's easiest to cover a box if you carefully take it apart and flatten it, reassembling it after the glue dries. I used plain white tacky glue (colle inélégante). The pot pie box has a nice piece of silver paper inside that can also be used to add a decorative touch. Now if I could just figure out what to do with that pot pie pan...Incense burner, suggests my friend Kim. (It appears to be fire resistant). Or a place to park a gluey brush when making projects..
 

Diversity Trees from Susan Bee (Diversitrees)

While reading Charles Darwin, I find myself thinking about those Trees of Life. I really love what I'm calling "diversity trees," created by artist Susan Bee – paintings with many surprises in the branches. I wonder if she thought about Darwin at all when developing her tree-tropes.

They make me wonder: what sort of objects and items live on my diversity trees? Divinity trees. Trees of natural and not-so-natural selection.

What lives on yours?

Here is In a Medieval Garden:

And here is Butterfly Boy Drawing, which I currently use as wallpaper on my laptop.

Ice Cream seems relevant, too. (This appears to be a body-image piece, with ice cream in an ambivalent role):

Aren't they amazing? Here's another, from a cover of Fox, a collection of poems by Adrienne Rich:

Darwin Tattoos and the Tree of Life

Darwin is famous for his Tree of Life hypothesis, and we talked yesterday about how his ideas predict the science of ecology (here is that Wikipedia definition):

Ecology (from Greek: οἶκος, "house" ; -λογία, "study of") is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the interactions between organisms and their environment.^[1] Ecology is also the study of ecosystems. Ecosystems describe the web or network of relations among organisms at different scales of organization. Since ecology refers to any form of biodiversity, ecologists can conduct research on the smallest bacteria to the global flux of atmospheric gases that are regulated by photosynthesis and respiration as organisms breath in and out of the biosphere. Ecology is a recent discipline that emerged from the natural sciences in the late 19th century. Ecology is not synonymous with environment, environmentalism, or environmental science.

The only image in the original On the Origin of Species is a tree diagram representing Darwin’s model for the theory of evolution. It looks like this (kind of like a musical score):

The first draft of his Tree of Life is a sketch in the little black notebook B (now at Cambridge University), from July 1837. The text reads:



I think

Case must be that one generation then should be as many living as now. To do this & to have many species in same genus (as is) requires extinction.

Thus between A & B immense gap of relation. C & B the finest gradation, B & D rather greater distinction. Thus genera would be formed. — bearing relation (page 36 ends - page 37 begins) to ancient types with several extinct forms.

And here is that sketch on the body of a contemporary Darwin devotee (below), found at the site of Michael D. Barton ("Darwin's bulldog," writing from Bozeman, Montana), Dispersal of Darwin. Looks a bit like a wound with stitches.

There are many more Darwin tattoos, including those over at the Discover blog. Here's an impressive one of  the portrait variety: "Got it at Darwin City Tattoos, in Darwin, Australia. The artist is Blue aka Mat Selwyn."