Earth and Heaven
The Buckeye Seed
Bipolar (1-7-2025)
It will be difficult. How can I convey what compels me to do this next series. It must be more than a botanical drawing, much more. The seed I want to celebrate has been described as bipolar, combining two antagonistic impulses: one a quest for light, for the sun, and the other an attraction to the soil, always pulling towards the center of the earth. The panels appear to me at night, but so vaguely. The buckeye seed will be hovering between heaven and earth, larger than life, but how do i portray the inner force that holds the middle between two contrary, irreconcilable drives.
Herlinde Spahr. Notebooks
Earth and Heaven. The Buckeye Seed. 1
Metaphor (1-12-2025)
From the outside, it will just look like a botanical drawing on steroids, an oversize buckeye seed sprouting leaves and growing roots. But to me it will be a metaphor of an inner life, a natural equivalent that teaches me about gravity, the importance of being grounded, of staying close to the soil when the mind soars beyond its boundaries.
Herlinde Spahr. Notebooks
Earth and Heaven. The Buckeye Seed. 2
Both earth and heaven (2-4-2025)
With the series of storms from the Pacific, most of the seeds have their first root, the radicle, protruding through the brown skin. It looks like the beak of a bird puncturing the eggshell. While the sprouting leaves will seek the sun, the radiclel has evolved to be sensitive to gravity and will always twist and curve seeking soil. Darwin, at the end of his book, “The Power of Movement in Plants,” (1880) waxes poetic about this root’s tip: ”We believe that there is no structure in plants more wonderful, as far as its functions are concerned, than the tip of the radicle.“ He even compares this tip to the brain of the lower animals.
In modern scientific research, they describe the dual nature of the buckeye seed, seeking both heaven and earth, as being “schizophrenic” and “bipolar.” Our borrowed metaphors fail to lasso the mystery. But I know I can learn from this seed’s innate gift to ground itself.
Herlinde Spahr. Notebooks
Earth and Heaven. The Buckeye Seed. 3
The bipolar seed (3-27-2025)
I watch the first buckeye leaf growing and unfolding every day. How such a small bipolar seed can speak to my soul.
Blessed the artist that finds in the outside world a metaphor that sends the inner world thrilling. Like a rope spanned across the waters that separate us, art reconnects two alien worlds. A lifetime of such ropes is the legacy of an artist. We are no longer alone and aliens in our world, a doubling territory that we can call home.
Herlinde Spahr. Notebooks
Earth and Heaven. The Buckeye Seed. 4
Facing the wall (9-5-2025)
My buckeye series is sitting in the studio, facing the wall. I need distance. I don’t know what I have done. To me the work flashes the need for grounding, for a radicle that will always anchor you, give you ballast. Must one have experienced mania to admire the balance between heaven and earth in this last panel? I must close my eyes to see what I have done.
Herlionde Spahr. Notebooks
DOCUMENTATION
Dimensions: four panels measuring 45" by 24". Free form.
Sheet of Formica (Antique White) glued to 2 doorskins.
Medium: litho ink, oil paint, graphite, graphite dust, litho pencil, gouache, tusche, scraping and levigator scarring. Fingerprints.
Date: March 12 to August 17, 2025
