Faith and Science EggIt must have been fire that did it: that implacable color -- all red and orange and gold, kohl and rouge and scarlet-dyed sisal -- singed beyond the equator into a mere preliminary sketch of smoky chalk and gridded graphite, a base of grays that smolders alone but in reflection shines.
Almost Real Egg
Foliage greens tease the eye; the mirage of lush tropics presents itself in wistful smears of color over this egg's surface. Though mostly the blue-white of swirling clouds' wispy trails, the egg's base presents an image of vegetated hills, or heat-teasing green-blue oceanscapes. The faint rippling of color only helps to confuse the senses: naught remains a constant in this egg's world.
Kitschy Yard Ornament Egg
The generic perfection of plastic molds this gaudy egg, pressed smooth with but the barest seam of roughness circling it lengthwise. Tacky-bright and flamingo-pink, its colors range from near-red to pale pastel and back again, swooping in a feathered pattern before plunging lock-kneed into the base's grassy green. A black-stroked bill twists likewise down as if to peck, and beady knobs glare at whoever dares the lawn.
Ukrainian Eastern Egg
Bright colors and intricate patterns float in their myriad of possibilities across this dark maroon-themed shell. Tradition seems emblazoned in every geometrical -- and not-quite-so ? pore. Floral decors and pencil-thin designs of shapes, almost pictures, stand out in beiges and purples, barely-hinted-at forest green, while jewel-stud lumps organize themselves around the circumference. Like tradition, this egg seems unbreakable, constant, a pillar in dire hours.
Photography Egg
The lines are bright, and shadows are clearly defined along the slick surface of this ovoid. Although the elements are clear, the image is indistinct: grays and blacks blend, meld, bend into whites and vanillas. Only the vaguest sort of color stains the otherwise muted egg: a sepia blush infuses only what otherwise would be the shell's brightest points. Dark and vaguely ominous, it nestles quietly in the warm sand....waiting.
Blown Glass Egg
From a nugget of pearlescent green, a galaxy of glittering rainbows spirals around the smooth and scintillating curves of the egg. Translucent, it glows as light strikes the surface, visions of delicate violet and burgundy lacework leaping to the eye in a moment of wonder. Where the arms of the brilliant galaxy embrace, another nugget of color, this one crimson, blossoms in a spiderweb nest of silver.
Almost-mosaic and not-quite mosaic blend together into a pattern of shifting facets. Rose and indigo are the dominant hues on egg's surface, together creating an image of vision from two points of view -- side and front. The slightest touches of other colors add detail, and decal, to sloping sides, the illusion of squareness not quite -- but almost -- there.
Iconic Byzantine Egg
Illusory furrows of shadow and streaks of light interplay with polychromatic crimson, violet, and cobalt to create the feel of lively and aggressive coruscations in this determinedly orthodox egg. Patchworked ornamentation projects the gloss of enamel and precious stones against the plainer putty of shell in a perfect union of two natures.
Sanded Cartouche Egg
Not golden this egg, though almost so; the sands of time swirl, omnipresent, around shell's perfection. The deep yellow-brown of desert dunes sets the background for the faintest of gray etchings -- chicken scratchings soon washed away, but bearing up as long as pure culture can. In rows of straight-edged patterns, names almost form, only to be brushed away under another onslaught of time.
Weathered
Mediterranean Frieze Egg
Crafted patches of bright calcium cavort over the figure of this large egg, their pristine images heightened by bronzed details of musculature and expression. Blackened edges give each form a separate province over which to assert its own autonomy, to explore its own region with thin, gray tentacles of miniature cracks. Though refined, sedate, and totally innocuous, almost one hundred figures dance upon the dark shell, wanting only for interpretation.
Faded Sunset Egg
Wisping, trailing, streaks of orange, yellow, and shades thereof color a twinkling platinum shell. Silver, though, is barely discernible behind the smoking, brighter elements. Faintly, oh so faintly!, smudges of blue and purple hide in light shadows, and wherry-wing 'v's present themselves nearer the base -- all a tribute to a dying day.
Gaudy Gaudi Egg
Tangling vines at once defy and define the shell's broad-bellied architecture, sliding sensuous brown shadows about stucco as yellow and undulant as noonlit sand. Stars may only silhouette structure's protective symmetry, an oval not unlike the others; it takes warmer light to tease out the exhibitionist dimension, tasty snail-spirals that convolute into trompe l'oeil hollows in which, in turn, swim scales of fishy, fissured iridescence.
Protective Roman
Decoration Egg
Riotous color has faded to the muted tones of compatibility on the smooth surface of this oblong ovoid. The haze that blurs the shades of saffron, lime, and blueberry obscures whatever scene might lie beyond, even though a thousand and one details can be picked out. There's a pinprick of sunshine yellow here, a spray of sea-green there, but lines of granite gray shoot across the egg in a seemingly haphazard fashion. Their sporadic intersections form crude geometric shapes visible only from afar that only lend to the overall unreality of the egg.
Twisting Tessellations Egg
Barely-etched lines of color skitter across this egg's surface, forming one jumbled shape over and over again. Rounded curves and pointed angles leave no distinct form whatsoever to this shape, yet a fleeting image of talons and wings can be conjured by imagination alone. And no spaces are left between the repeating shapes. By some miracle of nature -- or, perhaps, chance -- it interlocks perfectly, fitting into itself like a leather glove. And it is not bereft of color: checkerboard style, pastel blues and greens weave themselves in.
Velvet Painting Egg
Black, blacker, blackest -- well, except for that hazy, champagne-blonde suggestion made brighter by contrast -- but not any clearer: a figure with outstretched arms? A yellowfruit tree? A wherry? Nebulous and enigmatic, the soft, matte darkness whispers sweet nothings to the images within, melting its edges like butter in a pan.
Illuminated Manuscript Egg
Bands of green, blue and red seem to jump out from this large egg's smooth shell, twisting into intricate patterns that braid and twine around each easy curve. One twist of green could be grasses, and the wisp of brown that follows them could be the slope of a runner's tail. Similar scenes of avians, animals, and even forms that might be human play themselves out, seemingly inked across the parchment surface in bright colors. Here and there, sprinkles and accents of brilliant gold bring those scenes to life with light.
Neo-Classical Egg
Blinding, brilliant white, with the faintest kiss of silvered haze, presents a neat and geometric front, every curve and angle perfectly balanced. Colorless, yet so much more than simply plain, the textured shadows play havoc on centuries, breathing life into antiquated styles, revering the shape but bleaching it into a new, clean, and ultimately /modern/ sphere.
Ancient Mosaic Egg
Weathered terra-cotta forms a rough-hewn pointillism; each tiny square of color finds its place in the curvature of this egg's shell to build an illusion of something altogether different. Erosive age has leeched -- bleached -- the vibrancy from its porcelain tapestry, plundering the pearlescent glazes and stripping the youthful blush from each stone to render a bony pallor. But still, the phantom of that ancient design remains -- sketchy testament to the fading memory of a dream.
Overpaint Egg
Oh, it all seems smooth enough, steady enough, almost wallflowerishly easy with its neighbors: its face is just a wash of taupe that drifts without demand into the ho-hum white of an overcast sky, with a sweet, grass-green pleasantry summing up an end. Perhaps in brighter light, that zipper of a scar might show; the stubble, the bumps, the rough scrape underpinning such thin neutrality; there's what's on the surface -- and then there's how it feels.
