(Extravaganza)
"Extravaganza" always sounds to me like some hi-tone fabric like organza or like the spirited Italian for "abundance" ("vivere nell'abbondanza," to live in plenty).
The photographs show two passages of extravaganza abutted, the one at the left a passage of delicately but decisively placed and adjusted girders, strapping, braces, members--plotted against a liquid turquoise sky, and the one at the right simply flourishing wildly and without cessation in another extension of the natural world (desiccated leaves, berries, seed pods), botanical leftovers in sprightly array.
I admire man-made structure as much as the next guy--the joining, the fixing in place, the will-to-space, the resulting stability, the poignant desire to make something by hand (or by industry) that is as exuberant as crowded stems--even crowded stems, laden (as they are here) with beautiful decline. But you can't beat wildness. Building is all desire held within proscribed structural limits and adjusted to agreed-upon tolerances. Building in nature (i.e. growth), by contrast, is a barbaric flood of organic utterance. Nature howls like a high wind.
