Nest Series: The Copper-Bamboo Nest

 

I thought I was done with the Nest Series when I finished the Garbage Nest, but compulsions have a mind of their own, and apparently my nesting days were not quite over. After trimming the roots off some root-clogged bamboo plants growing in water, I simply couldn't toss the trimmed roots. I knew from past experience (the Roots Project) what fun can be had with bamboo roots, but I also realized they weren't substantial enough (or I didn't have enough of them) to comprise the entire shape and structure of a nest. For no particular reason, I tried cutting off some thin strips of copper from copper sheeting I had in my stash and the problem was solved. The copper adds some much-needed structural integrity to the nest. This one is tiny and delicate and houses a papier-mâché bead constructed from old travel notebook pages and gold Chinese joss paper. (For more on how to make these beads, click here.)

A nest in the hand...

A nesting bardo bead

Copper strands offer structural support

The Nest Installation

And here, for the very first time, a few photos of the Nest Series installation.

Suspended amongst the philodendrons

I hadn't realized until a house guest arrived shortly after the nests were installed that my guest daybed in the front room is itself part of the nest series when converted into a comfy place to curl up with lots of fluffly pillows and quilts.

Guest daybed amidst the nests

Nest Series: The Garbage Nest

 

When garbage becomes home

This nest, comprised of plastic garbage bags, candy wrappers, and other bits of refuse fished from the trash, proved to be the trickiest to figure out.  I decided on knitting as the technique, but then had to invent a really wonky pattern that involved starting to knit from the tips of the pattern below, keeping them well separate, and adding stitches to each of four panels row by row until I merged them all together to form the nest wall. To construct, simply fold the triangular edges under, overlapping, until they form the base of the nest and stitch together.

How to knit garbage

How to knit garbage

Miraculously, when folded in place and stitched together, it does indeed form a nest.

The nest

I cannot think of anything better to make a cozy home in this nest than my extensive collection of pop-tops from cans, which I use for everything from jewelry making to assemblage to wall hangings. On reflection, I realize nests would be a perfect system for storing random art supplies.

A clutch of pop-top tabs

I thought this Nest Series has come to a fitting end with this garbage nest, but that was before I harvested roots from my bamboo. Stay tuned. . .

Nest Series: Krishnamurti Nest

 

Krishnamurti Nest

Next up in the nest series is the Krishnamurti Nest, inspired by a number of week-long retreats I've had the great good fortune to attend at the Krishnamurti Foundation of America down in Ojai, California. Situated on the site where K himself lived and taught, the setting of orange groves, pepper trees, and abundant wildlife is surrounded by the Topatopa Mountains. One pepper tree in particular, the tree under which K experienced a transformative spiritual rebirth, (backstory here), warrants special attention and a loving pat or two on its trunk.

This nest is partially made from one of the booklets offered as part of the superbly facilitated dialogue sessions run by Richard Waxberg and Deborah Kerner. The nest has been built to house an abundance of pink peppercorns and leaves from the property where K used to live.

Materials: booklet pages

Materials: pink peppercorns and leaves

Each nest in this series has required reinventing construction techniques based on the unique materials being used. In this case, thin wire was wrapped in strips of paper and used as a framework. More paper, cut into strips, was braided and then woven in and out of the infrastructure.

Nest building in progress

Nest building

The final nest is light, airy, and almost as magical as sitting on the back lawn during a K dialogue, listening to the birds and the rustle of trees and realizing, I am all of this.

The nest

Nest Series: The Seaweed Nest

 

The Seaweed Nest

The winter of 2025 seems to be a time for huddling down and nesting, and here we have number three in the Nest Series.  This organic creation was inspired by a rain walk on the shores of Lake Merritt, Oakland during one of the many atmospheric rivers that hit the Bay Area coast in the past few months. A king tide had created a surge that threw mounds of seaweed and shells onto the lake path. I collected a bunch, took it all home, and created this.

King tide seaweed

Really cool seaweed

I've worked with seaweed before (check past Seaweed Projects), and knew the trick was not to try to stitch or otherwise fasten the raw material together, but to mold it into the desired shape and keep tweaking the molding process as it dried.

Molding the seaweed

Tweaking the mold as it dries

One of the challenges in this nest series is to decide what to house in a particular nest. In this case the decision was relatively easy. I opted for a combination of seashells tossed up by the tide and a few choice pieces from my collection of sea beans. If you have walked the shores of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, or East Africa, you have encountered sea beans — seed pods that drop into waterways or shorelines and are carried away by the tides to travel to distant shores. For those curious to learn more, "What the Heck is a Sea Bean?" is an entertaining post with a sea bean identification guide.

The nest

A clutch of shells and sea beans

On to the next nest!

The Daffodil Nest

 

In November of 2024 I began making a series of nests. Why nests? Perhaps it was due to the darkening skies, shorter days and colder weather. Maybe it was a way to indulge my love of playing with unlikely materials and figuring out how to put stuff together. Or maybe it all started with a bargain bunch of daffodils from Trader Joe's. Who knows? I've learned not to question these urges.

This is not the first nest I've created. The first was called Weaving a Metaphor, and that nest, created to hold a wounded ceramic bird, was composed of eco-dyed cloth, native grass roots, broken jewelry bits, and scraps of coffee-dyed paper notes. I thought it was a one-and-done, but the nesting itch continues.

The woven metaphor nest

The nest that kicked off this current series was spawned during the Easter season when Trader Joe's sells lovely little bunches of hopeful daffodils at ridiculously low prices.

The birth of a compulsion

I vaguely remembered seeing posts by a charming young woman living in rural England who forages the forest for plants, including daffodils, and proceeds to make string and baskets from it all. I thought, hmmm..., and hung my Trader Joe's bundles up to dry.

Drying daffs

Having absolutely no idea what I was doing, I launched into making I-know-not-what by boiling the dried daffodil flowers in hopes of producing a dye. Which worked, sort of. A bunch of linen strips added to the daffodil dye bath resulted in a pale shade that an optimist might call "pale daffodil".

Daffodil-dyed linen strips

By now I'd decided to make a nest, largely because it is hard to be judgmental about a nest. You feel whoever made it, whether creature high or low, put in their best effort. I knew I'd need something to weave together with the daffodil stems, and the daffodil-dyed strips were one solution. Adding a dried ivy vine I happened to have on hand was another.

Soaking daffodil steps and dried ivy vine

The next step was to relax my chattering brain, work through my fingers, and build a nest. Note the aesthetic decision to leave the daffodil bulb heads arching out from the top of the nest. That seems to point to a meaning none of us will ever know.

Weaving the daffodil nest in a water glass

And the end result is the daffodil nest, the first in a series of four unless I can't stop myself.

The daffodil nest (with mamey seed inside)

Weave Yourself a Metaphor

 

Weave Yourself a Metaphor

This assemblage combines scraps and elements from a range of different projects: native grass roots and the chiffon ribbon and broken jewelry bits the roots were supposed to miraculously and organically turn into jewelry (but didn't); knitted strips of eco-dyed cloth; and strips of paper dyed with coffee containing notes from the spiritual window shopping I have been doing over the last several months.

Elements

Broken Bird

A gift from a friend who knows my inner nature.

Broken porcelain chick

Roots, Ribbons and Jewelry Bits

Technically, this is part of the ongoing Roots project. Here we see the native grass roots, chiffon ribbon, and broken jewelry bits in situ. The idea was that this stage of the project would give the roots agency and they would assume control of the jewelry-making process. That didn't happen — the roots did not bond and intertwine with the ribbon as envisioned. So...they have been recycled into this assemblage.

Native grass roots trying to fashion jewelry

Eco-Dyed Recycled Cloth

Scraps from an eco-dyeing session, cut into long strips, knotted together, and then knitted.

Cutting cloth into long strips

Knitting cloth strips

Paper Scraps with Notes

The notes contain ideas that captured my attention in recent months, like: "An ideology is one's imaginary relationship to reality." To encourage the notepaper to blend better with the rest of the elements, I dunked the notes in a cup of coffee and then let them dry. No photo - use your imagination.

The Assemblage

When this piece began, I was focusing on the poor little chick's plight and was using the working title, "Broken." As the work evolved, it transformed into "Weave Yourself a Metaphor," which, as far as I can see, is what we are all doing every morning when we wake up.