Relationships

I have been working on a painting project over this past year. I am calling it Vegetable Portraits. Vegetable Portraits consists of nineteen small paintings and four soon-to-be large-scale paintings. Essays accompany the smaller paintings of vegetables, farms and farmers, and reflect the moment of the painting, the nature of the subject or the thoughts that the subject inspired within me. I have just completed two large-scale (4’ x 3’) renditions of two of the smaller paintings, and plan to create several more as part of the series. These large paintings further explore the color, space and compositional relationships initiated in the smaller pieces. 

Getting into the large-scale painting below of the Cukes, I began to see the relationships more clearly and how critical the transitions and so-called negative spaces are to the piece. Working big, it was easier to get lost in the painting - the movement, the color and defining the edges of the Cukes to create the spaces between. It's amazing that those spaces where "nothing" has been created become essential to the poetry of anything - paintings, landscape, dance. Some of the most eloquent thoughts on the importance of "betweeness" I've come across came from a New York Times book review on The View from Lazy Point, in which the author attempts to relay Carl Safina's views on the meaning of life. It makes me want to read the book.

...Safina asks us to reconsider the importance of that perennial question: “What is the meaning of life?” Which, he believes, is the wrong question to be asking because “it makes you look in the wrong places.” The right question is, “Where is the meaning in life.” And the place to look is “between.” In other words, we should look for the ways that all living creatures and all habitats are connected, look for what happens “between” them. “Relationships,” he insists, “are the music life makes. Context creates meaning.” 

By DOMINIQUE BROWNING Published: January 14, 2011

Perhaps that is some of the answer to my question in my last blog about how to choreograph transitions and create that sublime between.

Cukes - 10"x14"

Cukes - 3'x4'

 

Transitions

On the trip to Mexico I was able to look into my peripheral vision more often than I usually do when in my life at home. I wandered into familiar internal thoughtscapes of metamorphosis and found myself intensely aware of transitions - dawn, the sidewalk between the jungle and the road, the way a coconut connects to its stem and the pleasing wash-tub to rinse my feet from the beach when going into our palapa immediately come to mind. The novelty of those transitions got me thinking more about how metamorphosis might happen - fluid to solid to vapor - movement through membranes - thresholds - victory arches. When I was active doing outdoor installations in Baltimore with ice, that flux figured heavily in my work. 

What's different is that now I want to observe and experience the process of transition. There's a poetry to giving oneself to that flux and a danger of floating away - perhaps therein lies some of my curiosity in diagramming where and how materials/objects/spaces/planes of experience meet and intersect to create the living tapestry of each person's day. How does one choreograph seamless transitional elements in art and landscape installations to foster a deeper understanding of the self and how it relates to the world?  

sea fan

coconuts

Muyil

Buildings revealed from the jungle rise from the earth here. Walking earlier in the day on a concrete path beside a neatly trimmed edge I saw a barbed wire fence straining with the jungle behind it. Was the jungle being kept at bay or was I? Seeing the array of foliage, termite nests and the ubiquitous trash - I believe we both were being kept from each other with good reason. But here in this place, Muyil, there's a poetic balance that exists between entropy and its opposite, ectropy.

Trees rise from stone, spill over hard edges and reappear. I am reminded of Baucis and Philemon the two gracious hosts in Ovid's Metamorphoses who wish for eternal life together - and become trees at the same moment - standing together at the temple of Zeus.

"The people of Bithynia still show the neighbouring trees, there, that sprang from their two bodies. Trustworthy old men related these things to me (there was no reason why they should wish to lie). For my part, I saw garlands hanging from the branches, and placing fresh ones there said: “Let those who love the gods become gods: let those who have honoured them, be honoured.” Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk VIII:720 - 724 

I love the intersection of hard and soft, living and inert and linear and biomorphic between these trees and temples. I wonder if these trees before me might have a similar provenance as those in Bithynia. I hope so. 

"Found" Art

I love water, and growing up, I would always visit the water, be it the Potomac River, or the streams behind our house in Newburyport, MA. No matter what I learn about water academically be it flow regimes, or hydrologic cycle, there is an ancient quality that Langobards and Celts incorporated into their art work that I feel deeply and profoundly - which can not be quantified. Understanding the essence of water is a challenge, you can’t hold it really, it either reflects or is transparent – becoming it’s surrounding, and then moves on. It is in the air around us and most of our bodies are water. I reckon that the quantity of water, as in the Potomac or the ocean causes the water in ourselves to realign with the pervasive currents that surround us. In my professional practice as well as my two and three dimensional art work, I attempt to honor that flux and dynamism I experience in the world, and to create a language to translate it to those around me. But there are times when that language is inadequate and it is best to let the images (moving and still) or the moment speak for itself as these "found" pieces do.

Ice block

Foam Swirls

Replication

We recently installed a curtain drain on the north side of our barn to catch the surface flow that had been running under the barn and then erupting in our front yard in at times picturesque fountains during major rain storms that are becoming the norm for climate pattern around here – if you can say there is one. As a result, we created a new area of wetlands to replace the portion we filled to divert the water flow from under the barn.

I created a conceptual planting plan for the area to supplement the wetland seed mix to suit the wet meadow ecological context and ensure that the replication is successful. The mix of plants Rose Mallow, Joe Pye Weed, Blue Flag Iris and Turtle head are all in the surrounding wetlands with the possible exception of the Mallow. These plants have important habitat value for all manner of creatures, and I am glad to have been able with this drainage project to have saved the barn from settling (or worse) and to have created another section of wetlands that can support the incredible diversity of wildlife that surrounds us through the wetland’s nutritive, water storage and aesthetic functions. 

Planting Plan

Plantings in the ground

Another view of plantings in the ground

Hardscape Terracing

The stone is in – walkways, raised beds, cribstone benches and an installation by Daniel. While just finished Friday evening, it looks like it has been here for a long time. Before the snow comes, the plan is to install the steel raised beds and soil so that planting can happen in the spring.

Daniel’s installation is beautiful. It integrates well with the terraces and the surrounding context of fields – with meaningful resonances to this place and beyond. The form draws you in from afar – and helps to define the area in which it resides. The inspiration for the form is from Etruscan tombs where the corner corbelling supports the dome of the structure. I appreciate that inspirational provenance given my love of Italy and the classical period. The piece is also intended to evolve and grow over time – through the addition of stones that we pull from our gardens – as the stone pile just to the east of this piece did when the Graves brothers lived here a decade ago.

Throughout the project, I’ve tried to stay true to the character of this place.

That’s part of the power of living in a spot where memory is so ingrained. There

is an inherent responsibility that comes with living here to maintain the poetry of the Graves brother’s legacy and interweave our own story with this place and not run a museum, where we are only the care takers. This land is continually unfolding as is history, and an interesting thing to me is what the history of the landscape tells me about the Graves and how they lived here. I am eager to integrate our stories with the recollections of our neighbors and the continuing narrative of the landscape we inhabit here.

Terraces

Cribstone Seating and Daniel's Installation

View from above

Detail

Design Evolution

The terrace hardscape is close to completion – laying the flagstone has been quick in comparison to the wall building. This project has taught me much about communication, humility, and flexibility - all elements essential to design. More than anything else, I’ve learned that a plan represents the best possible outcome of informed decisions made with the inspiration of the site coupled with solid analysis. That said, moving into the reality of materials, earth, people and three dimensions ensures that design is an evolutionary process. Good design does not mean holding on to rendered ideas, but means moving past those ideas if they undermine or are incongruous with the initial intent of the project or the realities of the ground as the project is being built.

It takes additional measures of creativity and humility to devise an alternative solution that is more true to the context of the site and the intent of the project. Specifically, I was challenged by the stone ramp I had designed – that in the plan and model appeared to be appropriate and beautiful. Indeed, the built ramp was beautiful and reminiscent for me of parts of Ollantaytambo, a magical Incan Fortress near Cusco. However, as the entry to the garden, it was too steep and forbidding to invite people in to garden and welcome them to the space. The ramp evolved into a staircase. Instantly it became more inviting, and more coherent to the order already established throughout the installation. The change truly ties the space together and to a degree softens the entrance even with out the presence of plants.

Out there this morning, I am pleased with the evolution of this project so far. The stairs are elegant and welcoming. I appreciate them for the physical access they grant and for the developmental access they gave me to push beyond the limits of my previous experiences.

I would like to thank Dan and Jared for their hard work and artistry in helping me realize this part of the wall installation. Their dedication and professionalism are truly inspiring. 

Ollantaytambo

Ramp Before

Stairs After