Basket Case

I remember spotting the basket under a fold-out table behind a stack of weathered gardening books—almost didn’t bother. But something about the way it peeked out, like it had been hiding in plain sight for years, pulled me in. Inside were prints, unframed and curling at the corners, each one speaking in a soft kind of whisper.

There was a ceiling study—Baroque or Neoclassical, it’s hard to say—with sun-kissed symmetry and warm beige tones. Beneath it, a sepia-toned photograph of a horse mid-stride, muscles caught in that impossibly elegant way only a horse in motion can pull off. And a few pieces I couldn’t place immediately—some surreal, some faintly absurd, all wonderfully strange.

I didn’t curate this basket, but someone did. Someone began assembling a story here and then... paused. Moved on. Forgot. Or maybe they meant for someone else to finish it. That’s the magic I find again and again—collections paused in time, just waiting for the right eye to complete them.

I didn’t frame a single piece. I stacked them. Let them lean on one another, find meaning through proximity. Because sometimes, the best way to tell a story is to resist the urge to finalize it.