100 cones

Clearing out a storage trailer, I found a book called Georgia O’Keefe: 100 Flowers. I had already begun painting traffic cones - they seemed to have proliferated in 2020, while we experienced a pandemic and an mass outcry for social justice. I decided the cones deserved as much careful attention as O’Keefe’s supersized blooms. They are like beacons, calling me to mundane and neglected landscapes, and prompting conversations with strangers as I sketch. It may take a while to get to one hundred.