Since we’re on the subject of art, check out what DC’s Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden used to look like:
No wonder they shut it down in 1979 for a major redesign. Can you imagine what it would have felt like to be down in that place in the middle of July surrounded by all that paving, baking in the Washington summer sun? Plus, remember that the garden is sunken, so whatever moist and tepid “breezes” might have oozed off of the Anacostia wouldn’t even have reached this garden.
Take a look at the pair of images below. What would you say they have in common?
Left: “The Arch of Nero” by Thomas Cole Right: Photo by John Glover.
Now, I’m pretty sure the garden vignette on the right was not modelled directly after Thomas Cole’s painting (on the left), but the two certainly do seem to share some genetic material, don’t they? The arches, the vines, the muted colors, the effort to capture antiquity — all are present in both painting and garden.
La Siesta, by P. Picasso
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso
One of the more frustrating aspects of teaching school is being party to a system that drives the joy out of learning for probably nine out of ten students. By the time students get to high school, they have had their “skills drilled” and their “proficiencies assessed” so often it’s no wonder they finish out their secondary education in a cynical haze so thick that neither my most inspired lessons nor my most intimidating deathstare can penetrate it.
In American classrooms today, there is so little opportunity for personal expression and genuine exploration it is almost laughable.
Except it’s not. It’s tragic.
This week Garden Designers’ Roundtable is posting about Art and Sculpture in the Garden. Even though I signed up to post this month, I have to confess that art and sculpture intimidate me a little, in the garden and everywhere else. In fact, you might say that I am uniquely disqualified to give advice about art. To preface my GDRT post, I thought I’d share a story about my early experience in art to show what I mean.
As a kid, like most kids, I had fun with art. I liked coloring with crayons, making papier mache masks, creating construction paper mosaics. I wasn’t particularly talented, but I reveled in the creative aspects of art, and loved all the fun materials.
I’m sad to say that it was a middle school art class that drove the joy for art right out of me. During the ceramics unit for that class, I created this clay beaver:
Yes, I’ve kept it all these years.
Yesterday I came across this article about a competition at the University of Alberta called “Strip-Appeal” in which architects and other designers submitted proposals for re-purposing abandoned strip malls. As big box stores and online retailers like Amazon claim more and more business, strip malls have started going empty.
Photo credit: Sten Odenwald
I had a look at some of the submitted designs and I couldn’t help but feel a little weary. Design proposals included:
1. several variations of a park/greenspace/community garden (Yaaaaawn.)
2. turning the strip mall into a mixed-use town-center-y kinda thing with underground parking. (zzzzzzzzz.)
3. a plan where people could just come in and use the building materials from the old strip mall to build whatever they wanted because there would be no zoning regulations for the new space. (Sounds like anarchy but at least it’s different.)
4. a gathering place for mobile “pop-up” retailers. (In other words, one week a space would be occupied by Dahn Yoga, the next by Haagen Daaz? Is this feasible?) Continue reading
Check out the little cutie I stumbled upon at Green Spring Gardens’ plant shop a few days ago:
What you’re looking at here, my friends, is a baby Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum) which (in case you’ve been living in Antarctica or something) you know is one one of the most coveted of ornamental trees.
Well, the minute I saw this little guy I knew it was coming home with me. When I worked at a local nursery a few years ago, 5 to 6 foot specimens of A. griseum were selling for close to five hundred Big Ones. They must be a bit more readily available now, and I know this one is a runt, but I couldn’t walk away from the $15 price tag. Plus, if you look closely at the tiny little trunk, you can see the bark already exfoliating! Awwww!
Never mind that I have no place to put it. No sir, not even close! I’ve already used up the three sunniest locations in my backyard with other ornamental trees that I yearned for (a river birch, a silverbell, and a sweetbay magnolia). And my front yard is spoken for as well. It already contains two large trees and three small ones. To try to throw the new Acer into the mix would just be disrespectful to all involved.
So I’m doing the noble thing and giving it away to a family that can give it a decent chance in life (my mom and dad). Their backyard has the sun and space that I simply cannot offer it at this point in my life. It pains me to give it up, but I know I am doing the right thing and giving it the greatest chance to fulfill its destiny!
Plus, maybe my parents will let me come over and water it sometimes. Sniff.
Yesterday my sister and I visited the beautiful Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in northeast DC for a photo class. Even though we got there at 6:45am to get the best light, the air still felt like a wet diaper.
Next time you’re out weeding, let these lines roll around in your head:
“[Weeds] would not be without their use, if they were good for nothing else but to exercise the Industry of Man to weed them out who, had he nothing to struggle with, the fire of his spirit would be half extinguished in the Flesh.”
William Coles
Adam in Eden, or Nature’s Paradise (1657)
“I weed, therefore I am.”
See. You thought you were just out removing some worthless crabgrass but actually you are saving your soul!!!! Without garlic mustard and nutsedge appearing in your perennial beds to challenge your human spirit, you would slowly deteriorate into an empty shell, a big, purposeless blob of Homo sapiens.
That’s cool and all, but I’m thinking my personal weeding style is more postmodern with a twist of absurdist. Let me go check out what Beckett or Camus had to say about this weeding business.
Black Walnut Dispatch 