By far the largest in the show, the small beginnings of
tulip trees can be seen in the early stand-alone draft, which Gay called "house." The tulips were a second thought. Feeling the middle too empty, she added hills. The roots were added last, a couple days later.
This is what she intended to put in the show, at 3 x 3":
But while she was getting everything ready to print, Debbie Drennan, who was sharing professional equipment and know-how, showed her an easy and barely predictable way to change all the colors of a piece. Gay enjoyed trying it out with the house piece. After much experimenting, she came up with enough versions to form a large square, which Debbie showed her an easy way to arrange precisely. Gay put them in an order designed to please the eye.
Then she rearranged them as a story of sunrise and sunset, achieved by putting the ones with morning or evening colors at the beginning and end. The moon was the final touch.
She thought. After all that work it was hard to resist completing the idea by moving the sun gradually across the sky.
All of this kept her working very late, not unusual once she got some creative momentum. She was so tired she wasn’t sure anymore why she did it, but it was one the best-loved pieces in the show.
There's a sort of symmetry between the unusual two-layered sky and two-layered ground.
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