So, Why the Humble Morning Glory?

In Praise of Ephemeral Glory

There is a simple, and unpoetic I suppose, answer to why the first of my Geometric Kimono Suite was named A Morning Glory.

No one has asked, perhaps because the flat disks do not look much like Ipomea purpurea, the common morning glory. The inspiration is that growing up the flowers I most admired were both blue. One could be gathered and brought indoors, Centaurea cyanus, the bachelor button, also called cornflower. They were humble flowers found even in vacant lots. I would often gather a fistful of bachelor buttons to present to my mother who would arrange them in an empty milk bottle. The little blue flowers looked lovely, lasting for days. My other favorite, the brilliant blue morning glories, could not be put into a vase. They had no stems. The cornflower and the morning glory are beautiful, simple flowers, but represented opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to fragility.

As an adult I grew both flowers near my studio, how could I not? One represented resilience, the other delicacy and impermanence. I chose the fleeting morning glory as a motif, intending to capture the transient essence and yet not paint them in any pretty way. They became ovoid-shaped elements freezing in time what can only be passing and withering in the flower garden. I do not go out of my way to make statements with flowers. In this case, however, I did take the concept of the morning glories which grew outside my studio doors and used the motif to hold onto what comes and goes.

Flowers come and go, kittens, too. Kittens grow into cats, they go, they come. Life and all involved mutate as time passes. Meanwhile, the morning glories on these kimonos persist.

Sandy Kinnee
Geometric Kimono Suite / A Morning Glory
1981
22" by 28"
handcolored etching on shaped, handmade rag paper