We spent a lot of time in Santa Cruz in the last two years. The landscape there feels old, like looking at 1920s photos of Southern California. As you drive down the highway, instead of tightly packed mansions filling up every square inch of the hills, you see farms, some working, some not, some seemingly abandoned. At the base of the cliffs, there are beaches, their occupants are mostly birds and crabs. There are some seals, and some are large enough to look like logs. The water is powerful and rocky. On sunny days, it can look deceptively inviting.

As you enter the town, the change is stark. On the right there are warehouses and business parks. On the left, townhomes. A man in a wheelchair, passionate about the Dodgers. A bit further, bad pizza, sad grocery, happy farmers market, bars, beach access, grumpy surfers, crusty locals, jaded and not yet jaded students. As you climb the hill away from the coast, larger homes, a suburban calm. Instead of farms, gardens, lush with fruit and flowers. This is where we walked and found some peace. Pausing to admire the plants, stealing a few pieces of overhanging fruit, discussing life.

In June the tree poppies bloom. Like fried eggs, glowing bright in the sunshine and the gloom. Ten feet high, clambering over each other to show off their rose-scented, bright white petals, and orange-yellow clusters of stamens.

This work is inspired by what I experienced standing next to and under that massive plant.

Nat Sarkissian

Technical details:
Produced from an algorithm I wrote in Javascript and GLSL.

The rendering is accomplished by drawing the outline of a shape (thin black lines), and filling it with hashes (thicker green, white, yellow lines).

Two shaders are used to simulate something like pen, oil pastels, and markers on textured paper, though the visual qualities of the final output are uniquely computerized.

Tree Poppies

From

Tree Poppies

Description

Algorithmically drawn tree poppies.

Artist

Artist royalty

Blockchain

Ethereum

Token standard

ERC-721

Contract address

Token

Tree Poppies by Nat Sarkissian | Verse