Seeing the Whole Picture, One Detail at a Time

I have a reputation among my friends.  Sometimes it’s a good one.  If they need something found or need help figuring out a problem, I’m the one they call.  Annnnnd… if we’re just hanging out at their place, having a good time, and they want every mistake and weird quirk in their house pointed out, I’m that man, baby.
I’m a chronic noticer.  I don’t know if it’s curiosity, ADD, a trauma response, or what, but since I was a kid I’ve always zeroed in on disruptions in patterns.
“The curves of those handles don’t match — you put your fridge together wrong.”
“This is the key to work, this is the key to home, this is the key to my mom’s house in 1997.”
“That rubber tree has scale.”
“The builders used a different trim profile above your stove.”
“This is Munstead lavender, not Hidcote.”

“I can’t understand the whole without the parts, and the parts don’t mean anything without the system they belong to.”

     Being able to see the whole image and the tiny detail is a big part of how my brain works.  When I stop at a pretty scene, it’s the big picture that catches me, but it’s the details that start my brain turning.  That transition is what makes the world feel magical to me.
   You can be on the trail up to the Maroon Bells in spring, surrounded by postcard level scenery, and the prettiest thing around is still a butterfly on a flower.  The mountains are stunning, sure.  But the colors and patterns of the butterfly, taking nourishment from a flower evolved to be a beacon of food and reproduction, all of it grounded in a field of other flowers with other insects; that’s the part that makes the whole system make sense.  I can’t understand the whole without the parts, and the parts don’t mean anything without the system they belong to.

     This is how I design, too.  Whether I’m drawing an illustration, building a piece of furniture, or making a photograph, I’m trying to honor the things I notice.  My favorite wood species have subtle but honest grain (poplar, ash, hickory).  Shadows creating tiny shifts in contrast and depth.  Even wildly different objects can be united by one small aspect of their form.

   Take euphorbias. People tell me all the time they can never tell when something is a euphorbia.  Fair enough, it’s a massive genus with a lot of variation.  But once you start noticing the small details, the patterns show up everywhere: the way the bracts layer over one another, the way the nodes and axils form those little knobs.  Suddenly these “unrelated” plants start looking like cousins.

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     So yes, my talent/curse for noticing small details occasionally results in a friend yelling, “Stop looking at my stuff!”  But it’s also the thing that led me into a life built around design, botany, horticulture, and crafting.  Noticing is how I make sense of the world, it’s how I work, it’s how I stay connected.