Beauty and Inspiration in a Parking Lot

During my employment as a landscape architect and planner, I designed my fair share of parking lots. Small, large, paved, gravel. I'm here to tell you, as if you didn't already know, that there is nothing glamourous about designing a parking lot - or being in one for that matter.  

The grey and black asphalt grows so hot during the summer that you can actually see the heat rising. The bays, sectioned by fading white lines, are stained by oil slicks and residual AC fluid. Traffic jams. Competition for spaces. Paying for a space.

I write this blog to remind me that even when the whole of something is mundane or ugly, elements of it can be beautiful and inspiring. A parking lot is hardly inspiring, but smaller vingettes within a parking lot, really set my mind in motion - the way the lines make patterns on the ground, the arc of the trees grown to provide shade, the subtle changes in shades of grey. 

This is true in reverse when we create.  Sometimes we find ordinary items -  ribbons, buttons, paper.  We examine, rearrange, and choose a composition for the pieces and, whatever it is, it really satisfies our need to make something beautiful to us.  The pieces ordinary pieces inspire us to create a more beautiful whole.

My point is - whether you deconstruct something unappealing or make something new from ordinary parts, there is can be beauty and inspiration.  It all depends on how you decide to look at it.