Mass MOCA

Tuesday I visited the Mass MOCA in North Adams, usually full of fascinating and beautifully made artwork, well displayed in a incredible setting I found this visit dissapointing. The building (an old textile mill that was converted into a gallery yet still maintains a lot of the mills features from flaking paint to numbers in pencil on the walls) is still exquisite, the setting amazing (North Adams is over the Berkshires, nestled in a quiet valley that doesn't seem to have seen much change since the 70's, the museum itself butts up against the old canal and tenement buildings which housed mill workers, from the windows you can see the surrounding mountains).

The exhibitions this time were Spencer Finch: what time is it on the sun? The Believers, Made at Mass MOCA and Training Ground for Democracy...on the way in the ticket seller points the way to the galleries, we toured the whole area we were told was the exhibition space and yet did not find Made at Mass MOCA or Training Ground for Democracy so either they were closed or somewhere that was badly labeled...though by the time we had toured The Believers and Spencer Finch we were pretty disillusioned and not up for searching out any more art.

As you come in the door Spencer Finch's Night Sky (over the painted desert, Arizona, January 11, 2004) is hanging over your head. It looks at first glance like it might be interesting (I love lights)but once under it is sadly small and lacking. Perhaps because it is hanging in the entrance way? perhaps it would have more impact hung with a black background? perhaps if the description of his works wasn't on the wall right there to distract you?...perhaps perhaps perhaps...but as it was it was the start of a show that left me feeling sad (that the art world was being represented by this stuff and that good people who thought they might see some neat art were seeing this instead)and frustrated (that so much money was being spent on something so lacking)and a little shocked (that he is famous and has such a lot of work in a major American Museum...and that it went on and on in it's boring nothingness).

When I go to an art exhibition at a Museum I expect to be surprised, delighted, prompted to further thought, visually and mentally stimulated. After this exhibition I had to wonder if my expectations are wrong...am I expecting something that I shouldn't from an Art Museum?

Spencer Finchs work was not visually stimulating or at times even visual..."One of Finch's works appear at first glance to be blank or to picture nothingness" said the catalogue but it has to be added that second and third glance didn't seem to create something from the nothingness. Earlier in the catalogue Finch is discribed as being a representational artist, I have to say that what he choses to represent seems beyond dull. "a realistic depiction of NY city from the deck of the Empire State Building on a day with zero visibility" (ie a white piece of paper)...Each night a the particular shade of black on the ceiling or wall of a different spot in his studio (ie lots of bits of black paper) , an undeveloped photograph of Breugels Tower of Babel (1563) (ie a black box), The sky where the space shuttle Challenger exploded (ie an inch square of sky blue)....boring, boring boring...do I seem to be saying things more than once? maybe because rather than one painting of Freuds black ceiling there are many, one view of nothing there are many...

When one stands in front of a series of photographs and the most interesting thing one thinks at the time and the only thing one can recall later, is, do you think he meant the photo's to be buckled in their mounts? is that part of the work? the warping? then you've got to wonder about the world of art. The looks on the various other viewers faces was indeed one of the most interesting things about this exhibition, the rolling eyes, the looks of incredulity and dismay.

The Believers was a little more interesting, though again I was pretty astounded that this was artwork that was seen as deserving to be in a major American Museum. A lot of it was vague, the beliefs nothing astounding or new, and many beliefs struck me as being crutches to make the work or the artists themselves more interesting to the world. There were two artists though, whose work struck me as being worth looking into, one Roger Davis, a Warlock known as Witch Vortex, who lives in Savoy, Massachusetts, approximately 20 miles from MASS MOCA had created a Witch Circle, the Circle had been taken from his land and set up in the gallery. The circle contained numerous large wooden statues including those of Pan, a moon goddess, an altar for the phases of the moon, and a steer. Most of the statues had spider webs growing on them, and when standing among them you wanted it to be night and for the scene to be on the farm where the circle was created, with witches and warlocks doing their thing around you. I am presuming that his work was not intended for a gallery and so taking it from it's natural surroundings and placing it in the gallery gave it a surreal quality.

The other body of work that I enjoyed was by Emery Blagdon, a hobo for twenty years he then inherited a farm near the southern edge of the Sandhills of north-central Nebraska where he spent the next thirty years inventing his "Healing Machines" , a farm shed became his installation environment. These works, mostly wire and wood with found objects are intricate and complex, some resemble chandeliers and some space ships, and are intended to heal. Blagdon believed that his deliberately and delicately constructed pieces in combination with small rhythmic or concentrically patterned paintings, generated an electromagnetic energy that could alleviate pain and prevent—perhaps even cure—disease. Blagdon arranged his machines and paintings in a manner that was to aid in the conduction of electromagnetic pulses in the shed he built on his farm in Nebraska. His healing machines were whimsical and moved in the breeze, one can only imagine being in his shed surrounded by hundreds of them, in doing research on Emery I discovered that he used to have a lot of them lit up, and that he was "discovered" by Dan Bryden when he went to the local pharmacy to purchase materials for his machines.

flowers

drawings

the meaning of gardens

The Meaning of Gardens: a historical and cultural guide.

“In a sense, garden making is a human ritual. Through this activity we relate to the natural world, transforming it and bending it to our cultural imperatives. We have been doing this to a greater or lesser degree for more than ten thousand years”1.

It appears that gardens have as many meanings for the human beings that create them as the number of species of plants that can be found within them. Well maybe not quite as many, but certainly the meaning attached to the human desire, and some would suggest need, to create and tend gardens in their many forms has been explored at length by theorists, theologists, biologists, artists and of course gardeners. Gardens throughout time have been a symbol or metaphor for life and death, for the struggle between chaos and order, lust and desire; they have been discussed as symbols of masculine domination, symbols of power and are at present often used to communicate environmental and political concerns.

Gardens have been part of human experience throughout the ages. For many religions human beings were created within a garden and went on to struggle with desire and control within the boundaries of various gardens. The Indo-European source of the word garden is “gern”, which means to grasp, fence or set aside2. The garden as set aside or separate is also discussed in The Epic of Gilgamesh 3 written in the 3rd Century BC. The Epic states that one third of land is field, one third of land is city and one third of land is garden. This statement makes clear that there was already a distinction between the purely utilitarian field and the garden as something different-perhaps as a place of pleasure, spiritual connection or contemplation.

The seasons of earth are seen, felt and understood vividly through a garden. The birth, life and death of plants during these seasons remind us of our own mortality. Flowers with their short existence remind us even more fervently of this. Their beauty, scent, color or pattern is worked towards for months yet over in a matter of minutes, days or weeks. Yet without the flower with its intricate methods of pollination and reproduction the plants of the modern world would not exist, and without plants to eat or to feed to animals that we then live from, there would be no human life. The flower, therefore, reminds us of our own mortality and dependence on something out of our control. Though we are reminded of this mortality each time we enter a garden we are also reminded by the trees that span lifetimes before and after ours, by the plants that have evolved through-out time, by the myths and legends that surround gardens, and by the activity of digging in the ground much as our ancestors did, that life on earth continues on.

The garden has long associations as a sexual symbol. In the Christian Bible, Genesis 2:8-9, we can read: "The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”. God, so the biblical story goes, then goes on to create a woman who is tempted by the serpent to eat an apple, she shares the apple with man and both become aware of their sexuality and are consequently expelled from the garden and never allowed to return4. In a book of the Hebrew Bible known as the Song of Songs the garden is used as a metaphor for women’s sexuality and arousal5. The Beloved first says, “ Let my beloved come into his garden, and taste his precious fruits”6 to which the Lover replies, “I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice”7. During the Victorian era the flower was used in art and in the real as a token of ones emotional regard, running the gamut from love (the rose of course) to disdain (a yellow carnation). While all this is taking place metaphorically, biologically the flower is getting on with the work of reproduction. The flower, on which a lot of gardening energy and time is spent, both in cultivating and admiring it, is basically there to reproduce the plant as efficiently as possible. Garden flowers: whose aromas and colors are believed by many to have evolved to specifically seduce insects and humans8 so they will help them copulate; and whose reproductive organs, the pistils, stamen and seeds, are all readily to view, are all about sex. Flowers and their connection to sex has been studied scientifically, the scent produced from fresh roses has been discovered to give off a scent that contains Phenyl-ethylamine (PEA). PEA contains an amino acid that slows the breakdown of beta-endorphins; these are the endorphins that give us the giddy feeling of being in love9.

For many Eastern Cultures the human being is divided into 3 aspects, The Body, Spirit and the Soul. The garden has been understood as a place where all three aspects will be satisfied, the Body will be fed on produce grown in the garden, the Spirit will be fed by the beauty and spiritual things present in gardens, and the everlasting Soul which struggles with mortality will be brought to peace within the walls of a well tended garden. The Paradise of the biblical Garden of Eden, from which humans were expelled, is the place that many presume we are trying to recreate within the garden. The Hebrew root of the word Eden comes from the root word whose joint meaning is enjoyment and enlightenment, if you see your garden as a replica (however small or lacking) of Eden then not only do you enjoy the garden as a visual or sensory experience but you also attain from it a sense of enlightenment. You are, at one and the same time, brought to your physical and lifted to your higher being. For the West the garden is often seen as a replication of a piece of paradise whereas the Japanese believe that the garden is a place where you can actually go to paradise. You view or place yourself within the space of a garden and this allows you to enter a state of mind that is paradisiacal.

The theme of the garden as a symbol of the struggle that goes on between human’s base nature as a physical beast and as a higher spiritual or controlled being is discussed in Greek mythology. Dionysus brings wild plants into the “House of Cultivation”, yet by his own continued untamed presence (he makes and drinks a lot of wine) he reminds people of the chaotic nature on which that house always precariously rests and to which it may return if not continually controlled. Politician and writer Henry Adams once said, “Chaos is the law of nature- order is the dream of man”10. The garden, with it’s “battle” between nature, with it’s seasonal changes and unruly growth, and the human desire to force structure and pattern onto this chaos, can be seen as symbolic evidence of the struggle between humans base and spiritual sides.

During the Renaissance and Baroque periods man (and it was usually men who had the means) created vast ordered gardens, these were created specifically to show mans triumph over nature. Mathematical calculations, forced symmetry, straight edges, pruning, mowing, and paving were used to express man’s place as the center and controlling power of the universe. Ecofeminists believe that gardens, which demonstrate mans degradation of and domination over nature also reflect mans subjugation and oppression of women11. Thomas-Slayter and Rocheleau12 explain in one study in Kenya how the capitalist driven export economy (male owned) uses all the agriculturally productive land for cash crops. The subsistence farmers, mostly women in this region, were moved to higher less productive ground where they could not grow enough food to live on. In Kenya and elsewhere the increased use and abuse of land including the over use of pesticides and deforestation, along with terms like “rape the land” and “reap natures bounty” have been seen as evidence of man thinking of and treating, land and women, in similar ways.

Though many see the garden as a place of self-expression it is also a place where the community can look in and judge. During the last 100 years in both Britain and America13 the garden, in particular the front garden, has been a symbol of the owners civil attitude. The garden is seen as serving a public function by making the community more attractive14. Your garden should be open to the view, extending the vista for all beyond property lines. If your garden is well tended, neat and pleasant to view then you are seen as living in accordance with social standards. City and Town law though protecting the garden as a persons private property has also come down on both sides of the fence (so to speak) of the debate about the garden as civil respsonsibilty. Increasingly environmental and political concerns have entered into the way people garden, examples include organic gardens, wildflower gardens, or letting land that has been gardened return to it’s natural state. These gardens have caused some anxiety within communities, being seen as disorderly by some. Yet these gardens have encouraged larger dialogues around environmental and political issues. Some gardeners when taken to court have argued that county bylaws restricting plant growth violate freedom of expression rights15. Artist and landscape designer Roberto Burle-Marx, working in America and Brazil addressed many environmental issues within his garden designs. He understood and spoke of the use of native plants, his gardens included seasonal and ecological planting while he also included artistic concerns. Although he defined the main purpose of a garden as being “to give (people) pleasure in the shapes and colors of the growing plant”16 and spoke eloquently about gardens as places of expression and enjoyment, the public nature of many of his gardens increased awareness of native planting and environmental concerns. Future garden designers and artists such as The BGL17 have taken up these environmental concerns. Gardens, at the beginning of the 21st Century, are a place in which artists, designers, psychologists, historians and sociologists spend as much physical time as the person who likes to dig, plant, admire and stroll for pleasure.

The garden has throughout history had many meanings and it continues now to collect meaning. Some of these meanings are very much at the fore of our conscious thought, certainly the environmental concerns of recent times have made us think about some of these a great deal. Other meanings may be unconscious and are only brought to conscious thought by the writing in a good book18, a trip to an art gallery, sculpture park or garden art event19, a study we read about in a newspaper, magazine or on the internet20 or see evidence of in a movie21 or a movie dramatization of real events22. What gardens mean to us, as individuals will perhaps always be different to what they mean to us as members of the culture we live or believe in. Yet what they mean to us as individuals, whether we be artists, scholars, landscape architects, people with specific religious, philosophical or sociological beliefs or as people who just like to putt about in their gardens, also informs what they mean to the greater culture, to history and to myth making.

1. Walter Cook: Royal New Zealand Horticulture Society Book Review

2 Kurtz Hilda, 2001. Differentiating multiple meanings of garden and community. Urban Geography 2(7): 656-670.

3 Gilgamesh ruled at Uruk in Mesopotamia during the first half of the third millennium BC. Parts of The Epic of Gilgamesh can be compared and contrasted with the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.

4 The story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden is also used as a way of explaining humans desire to create gardens. Gardens in this explanation are seen as a way for humans to return to paradise.

5 “A Garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up” “she is a fountain in a garden, well of loving water” Song of Songs 4:15.

6 Song of Songs 4:16

7 Song of Songs 5:1

8 See Michael Pollan’s book in References: The Botany of Desire

9 Jill Koenigsdorf: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/02.09.05/flowers-0506.html See also Gene for the Production of “Rose Oil” http://apps.rgp.ufl.edu/otl/viewTechInfo.cfm?case=11281 It is also believed by researcher that phenyl ethylamine in turn causes the brain to release mesolimbic dopamine in the pleasure centers of the brain, another chemical where its presence is at peak during an orgasm

10 Henry Adams (1838-1918), http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/henry_b_adams.html. He also said "My idea of paradise is a perfect automobile going thirty miles an hour on a smooth road to a twelfth-century cathedral."

11 Ecofeminism, or ecological feminism, is a term coined in 1974 by Francoise d’Eubonne. It is a philosophy and movement born from the union of feminist and ecological thinking, and the belief that the social mentality that leads to the domination and oppression of women is directly connected to the social mentality that leads to the abuse of the environment. It combines eco-anarchism or bioregional democracy with a strong ideal of feminism. Its advocates often emphasize the importance of interrelationships between humans, non-human others (e.g., animals and insects), and the earth. A central theory in ecofeminism states that male ownership of land has led to a patriarchy manifesting itself in over-grazing, exploitation of people, and an abusive land ethic, in which animals and land are valued only as economic resources. Other ecofeminists explain how the degradation of nature contributes to the degradation of women.

12 This lead to intensification of pesticide use, resource depletion and marginalization of the subsistence farmers, especially women, to the hillsides and less productive land, where their deforestation and cultivation led to soil erosion, furthering the environmental degradation that hurts their own productivity Thoma-Slayter, B. and D. Rocheleau. (1995) Gender, Environment and Development in Kenya: A Grassroots Perspective

13 This garden open for all to view does not occur as much in NZ, people surround their property with high fences of hedges.

14 The Borrowed View: Privacy, Propriety and the Entanglement of Property. Nicholas Blomley, American Bar Association Paper. 2005

15 The Borrowed View: Privacy, Propriety and the Entanglement of Property. Nicholas Blomley, American Bar Association Paper. 2005

16 Page 58, Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape. Peter Walker and Melanie Simo. MIT Press, 1994.

17 A group of Canadian Artists known as the BGL created a structure called the “Sentier Battu” at the 2001 Jardin festival in Quebec. Page 162, Gardens Without Boundaries. Paul Cooper, Mitchell Beazley, London, 2003.

18 See references for many of these, particularly interesting is The Meaning of Gardens and The Botany of Desire, both which give excellent examples of broad and informed discussion from many angles about gardens and cultivated plants.

19 Down the Garden Path: The Artist's Garden After Modernism. Queen Museum of Art. June 26, 2005 – November 6, 2005, Roberto Burle- Marx’s garden designs (1909-1994), Ian Hamilton Finlay’s gardens (on going), Pierre Thibault’s “Jardin Territoire” (2001), BGL’s “Sentier Battu” (2001), Contemporary Photography and The Garden- Deceits and Fantasies a traveling Photography exhibition which started in 2005 and many others too many in number to mention here.

20 The beneficial effects of gardens and gardening for prisoners- http://www.cityfarmer.org/prison.html

21 The Draughtsman’s Contract, Peter Greenaway, (1982)

22 Greenfingers, July 27, 2001 Greenfingers takes as its inspiration the true story of a group of British criminals who bettered themselves through the delicate art of gardening. Croupier's Clive Owen plays Colin Briggs, a taciturn inmate doing time for murder. When it's suggested he transfer to a minimum-security prison, Colin is reluctant; at the idyllic Edgefield compound, he's slow to warm to his gregarious, botanically inclined roomie Fergus (Waking Ned Devine's David Kelly). When the warden forces Colin and his prison mates to cultivate the prison's grounds, however, the men decide it's a fate better than mopping the lavatory, and begin to take pride in their work. Their stellar efforts attract the attention of haughty celebrity gardener Georgina Woodhouse (Helen Mirren), who arranges furlough work for the men. Colin becomes particularly fervent with his bulbs and seeds, not to mention his affection for Georgina's daughter Primrose (Natasha Little). When he's offered the chance to go straight, Colin is torn between the freedom of the outside world and the comforts of his lockup flowerbed. Greenfingers made its North American premiere at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival before making the U.S. festival rounds. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

References:

The Meaning of Gardens. Edited by Mark Francis and Randolph T Hester, Jr. The MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 1991

Picturing Eden. Deborah Klochko. George Eastmen House and Steidl Press, 2006

Gardens Without Boundaries. Paul Cooper, Mitchell Beazley, London, 2003 Contemporary Photography and the Garden- Deceits and Fantasies. Thomas Padon, Harry N Abrams, 2004

The Botany of Desire. Michael Pollan, Random House, 2001

How Flowers Changed the World. William C Burger, Prometheus Books, 2006

The Borrowed View: Privacy, Propriety and the Entanglement of Property. Nicholas Blomley, American Bar Association Paper. 2005

Modern Gardens and the Landscape. Elizabeth B Kassler. Doubleday & Co, NY. 1964

Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape. Peter Walker and Melanie Simo. The MIT Press, 1994

The Painters Garden: Design, Inspiration, Delight. Edited by Sabine Schulze. Hadje Cantz Verlag, 2006

http://www.cityfarmer.org/prison.html

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/02.09.05/flowers-0506.html http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/henry_b_adams.html.

http://apps.rgp.ufl.edu/otl/viewTechInfo.cfm?case=11281 Kurtz Hilda, 2001. Differentiating multiple meanings of garden and community. Urban Geography 2(7): 656-670.

Down the Garden Path: The Artist's Garden After Modernism. Queen Museum of Art. June 26, 2005 www.queensmuseum.org/exhibitions/downthegarden.htm www.ecofem.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism

watercolors

The Contract

At my mentor's suggestion I watched Peter Greenaway's movie "The Draughtsman's Contract". Set in the English Countryside in the late 1600's the Draughtsman's Contract has been described as "an elaborate conspiracy thriller about class, sex and landscape, set at the feverish close of the 17th century." It tells the story of Mr. Neville, an ambitious and conceited young draughtsman, who, in 1694, is contracted by Mrs. Herbert to make 12 drawings of her husband's country property at Compton Anstey. This contract states that in return for these drawings Mrs Herbert will satisfy Mr Neville's "pleasure". The contract is very detailed and sets up certain stipulations about what may or may not be within the scene that Mr Neville is drawing. During the film these conditions are stated as part of the narrative and against this order is the evidence of something amiss; clothing, ladders and so on stray into the grid of the drawn scene, which Mr Neville, though pedantic to the core, for some reason seems happy enough to leave in the scene. Mr Neville is held in some contempt by most of the household yet is soon involved in the household's complex affairs. Mrs Herbert's married though childless daughter soon indicates that she thinks that Mr Neville is complicit in the suspected murder of her father, the evidence being the items that have been straying into his drawings. In order to have her protection Mr Neville must enter into another contract where he will satisfy her "pleasure". Then Mr. Herbert is discovered dead, floating in the moat...and it all spirals a little out of control from there. The dialogue was full of puns and wit in a stilted British way. The scenery was fascinating, a grandiose landscape, very cultivated by the house with trimmed trees and statues but open to the fields and hills around it. An interesting point was that there was very little color in the movie though it was set in a garden there were no flowers, all characters were dressed in either white or black and most scenes were filmed in muted light. The green of the landscape, brown of the brick house and trees being the only real color in the film. Late in the movie Mr Neville and Mrs Herbert are in the hot room where the gardeners grow pomegranates and pineapple. They have an interesting discussion about the myth of Persephone (1) and the Pomegranate and Mrs Herbert's gardeners being able to grow foreign fruits because of the false climate created in the room. At this point the symbolism of the fruit growth is explained as it is also revealed that Mrs Herbert and her daughter have been complicit in using Mr Neville to impregnate the daughter so she can bear a heir. The drawing's created by Mr Neville are eventually discussed at length and seen as providing evidence of not only the murder of Mr Herbert but also provide evidence of the daughthers transgressions.

(1) Persephone was playing in a meadow one afternoon when Hades, God of the underworld, burst from the ground and took her to the underworld to be his bride. Persephone is the daughter of the Goddess Demeter, who stands for fertility of the earth, the seasons, and the seasonal giver of grain. Demeter grieved and searched for her missing daughter and while grieving would not look after the land or allow crops to grow. If she continued to grieve man would die out from the famine and the Gods would be robbed of offerings, so Zeus, "king" of the Gods, stepped in and ordered Hades to let Persephone come back to Earth. One of the rules of the underworld is that if a person eats anything while there they have to remain. Hades agreed to let Peresphone go above to see her mother but slipped her a pomegranate seed which she ate so that she could not remain by her mother's side. Since she had eaten a pomegranate seed (or 3 or 4 or 7 depending on which myth you read), Persephone has to return to the underworld for three months but the rest of the time she is allowed to stay with the other Gods. While she is underground her mother grieves and does not tend the earth and winter is on the land. When Persephone returns, Demeter allows plants to take root and crops to grow, and the land is fertile again.

borrowed landscape

My Mentor suggested I look into the concept of the Borrowed View or Borrowed Landscape as a starting point or way to guide my studies and art. She suggested I look at the Glass House created by Philip Johnson. http://www.philipjohnsonglasshouse.org/ The house has 4 glass walls, with the only non-see-through element being a brick bathroom in the center. Other than that you can see through and out to the surrounding 47 acres he owned. he "created" or transformed the landscape to make it look like an English Countryside, manicuring the trees and so on, he had a painting-a copy of an English Landscape-on an easel in the middle of the living room. It immediately made me think of this... When I was about 11 I visited a friend at the beach and her family knew two people who had very contrasting homes. One family was incredibly poor, they had a house in the middle of a field overlooking a cliff and rocky beach, their house was made from old scraps of timber, corrugated metal, it was comfortable, really only one room, and very fun to visit. Things were re-appropriated and they were always doing something to some piece or other they owned to make it work better or at all or in a different way. They had a water bed (which had been given to them) that leaked, so they emptied it and filled it with air to find the leak, when it was filled with air it didn't leak so they just used it as an air bed instead...on which, when it was reinstalled, we all got to jump on. It was the funnest house to visit. The other people, another friends parents, owned a large block of land up on a hill, the NZ bush is very dense, almost jungle-like so we walked what seemed a long way (though was probably not so far) and ended up on top of a hill surrounded by trees and bush, there in the middle was a small house made from glass. It was totally see through and magical, they had just finished it. I don't remember there being a view so much as being surrounded by the trees and thinking how peaceful it must be to sleep in the house, safe yet open to the bush. So anyway those experiences are very different from Johnson's but are what came to mind first. His house is different from that glass house I visited, it's in the open which either means someone who is not afraid of people looking at him or someone who has lots of money so no-one can look at him as he owns all the land within looking distance...I suspect it may be the latter!

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I had already just bought a book called Gardens Without Boundaries, which is all about the borrowed landscape. Either by creating deceptive walls that make the land beyond the garden seem an extension of the garden, or creating views within the garden that mimic and therefore extend into the landscape. Blurring edges and ideas of gardens through art, design and thought. So I think yes the Concept of Borrowed View or Borrowed Landscape would be a good place to start.

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The Japanese word Shakkei (meaning borrowed landscape) describes a type of garden technique used frequently in Japan. The origins of the term are under some discussion, one suggestion is that the term originated when people travelled and were inspired by landscapes and gardens they saw on their travels and then came home and created similar gardens in their own spaces, so replicas of places they saw. Another explanation (and this seems to be the modern definition of the term) is that people with small enclosed spaces wished to "enlarge" them by creating a view to an outside landscape. This is done by either windows or mirrors. One interesting thing about this is that the borrower is dependent on the borrowed landscape remaining the same (or remaining something they want to "borrow"), but the borrower has little or no control over the view that they are using. I like this idea because it really brings to light the whole concept of borrowed, all landscape and gardens are borrowed in some way, if you look to Native American tradition their idea is that we as humans borrow the land for a certain time but it does not belong to us, we are caretakers and therefore have to think of what or who comes after out period of usage, and should consider future borrowers needs. This is pretty contradictory to Western concepts of proprietorship and also privacy- I read a great article by Nicholas Blomley called The Borrowed View: Privacy Propriety and the Entanglements of Property. "The garden is a symbol of privatism and exclusion, yet is also expected to serve public functions that transcend the self-regarding owner" He suggests that though gardens are private places which law in many countries (mostly western) protects as private, they also serve as public places and can be seen as community places. People in the community benefit from the private owners work and beautification of their land. Communities "borrow" others lawns and gardens as their views from their own property. He states some case studies which deal with the law requiring (or not) people to "tidy" up their property i.e. keep grass and weeds at a "reasonable" level. He also suggests that these ideas (which mostly came from the 30-50's in America and Canada-but extends back to the mid 1800's in Britain-are based on the culture of the civic minded citizen. To be a civic minded citizen you needed to be mindful of people viewing your land and had a responsibility to keep in mind the communities ideals when gardening i.e. the garden should invite viewers to look in and be pleased) are changing due to modern concerns with the environment and diverse religious views.

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Several artists have dealt with Borrowed landscape, one I particularly liked was Teresita Fernandez http://www.artpace.org/aboutTheExhibition.php?axid=192&sort=artist http://www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.4.SCULP.TeresitaFernandez.htm Also a funny take on Shakkei I found was this website... http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6519251

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I like the idea of gardens and secrecy and also non-ownership. My first garden that I created was when I was 10. We had a 3/4 acre section which ran down hill at the back and behind a hedge between our place and the farm behind was a ditch (which actually the county owned rather than either us or the farm neighbours...it was for flooding but rarely had water in it). I liked this piece of land, it was tucked away and no-one visited it, so I started creating a garden down there, "stealing" plants from Dad's extensive and beautiful garden and transplanting them along the banks of the ditch, moving ferns and tree ferns which were already growing down there around, squirreling away extra seeds when I helped plant the larger garden and planting them as well. I created paths and seats from old bricks and bits of wood. I didn't tell anyone I was doing this, Dad discovered it probably a year later when he went to put some cut branches down there. He started giving me plants to put down there and I eventually had a pretty neat little place. Years later because of property division changes they actually now own that bit of land and Dad decided he would make a garden down behind the hedges, he says everywhere he dug to put in a wall he would discover that I had already put one in the same place...he now has a really lovely fern garden as all the ferns and plants I planted are pretty big. I loved the fact that it was secret, just mine, no-one knew where I was when I went down there. I kept it secret for a long time...even though the keeping it secret meant that it would be less successful than if I shared it with Dad- who could provide me with access to plants and materials to make it better. I'll get Mum to send some photographs.

sticks

color thoughts

exposure

Scanned sunflower heads. The paint like marks are where the flower head caused condensation on the scanner bed. Compositional studies

A very cold Photoshopped impression of what I am thinking of doing Painting long strips very textured and worked at, with colors dissapearing and coming through, either leaned up against the wall or standing somehow...but how to make them stand so they look delicate and gentle like flower stems, rather than solid and clumpy... Am still working through ideas but thought I would put this out there anyway...

How can one of these... make one of these?...

July Goals and what I achieved:

• secure mentor- Duston Spear
• start dialogue with mentor about direction- Working in sketch book and drawing every day-need to determine more specific direction with Duston-started a blog for her and I where we can both write as things come to mind. Need to make date to visit her to discuss work further. Feeling a bit frustrated as I am waiting for her to look over my residency summary and respond as well as set me tasks and goals.
• read contemporary art book to determine further study-look at more installation art, process art, conceptual art- especially Jessican Stockholder (for painting with objects), Paula Hayes (sculptural terrariums) Richard Tuttle, Isamu Noguchi (garden scuplture) subscribe to two art magazines (contemporary art)- still researching which two...but have access to lots ot college library so have been looking at those.
• start researching artists to determine some to study in more depth-Morandi's flower drawings and paintings (incredibly beautiful and gentle drawings and paintings which I want to look at more, also fascinated and enjoy the fact that he was making these works alongside his hard edged abstract pieces) Kiki Smith (for her use of materials and making works which have an ethereal quality, yet are made with very rustic looking materials)Jessica Stockholder (painting in the 3 dimensional) Rachel Whiteread (use of materials) Also read a couple of books on artists making works on the garden and am looking at some of those artists further- Mattheus Hoch, Gavin Hopkins, Hongbin Sun, Terri Weifenbach.
• draw every day- been drawing and sketching with ink and watercolor every studio day, loving getting back to drawing! I have been drawing both reslistically nad more acstractly, trying to work capturing the physical and emotional realities of what I am looking at. Progressing through different media, pencil, paper, metal, ink, paint, scratching to see which best represents what I am trying to say.
• write summary of residency for advisor- done
• clean and organize studio-ongoing!!
• journal/blog at least once a week-this is working o.k, though writing needs to be better
• visit at least one gallery in Boston-went to Newbury Street, a few galleries were closed, I wasn't impressed by what I did see and was a bit bored with the galleries. Am going to visit the ICA and Mass MOCA as well in the next couple of weeks.
• plan specific body of work to be completed by next residency-6 paintings, Photographs, small stop motion flip book, Interactive piece (either book type work or something similar)Am still waiting for Mentor to help me with this in more specifics. Am mostly interested in making works that are "off the wall" in some way I like painting and the textures that painting incorporates but feel that there is something too "clean" or sterile about paintings hanging in gallery space, the hanging of canvas seperates them from the experience of where they came from, the grit and emotion of what they are trying to represent. I want the viewer to be more interactive with the work, like they are taking a walk through a garden.

frustration

Just spent an hour writing about July's Goals and what I had accomplished tried to post it and lost it forever...don't have the heart to re-write it now!!! grrrrrrrrr...off to run off some frustration.

hosta abstract

hosta photographs

hosta

ink, gesso, photopolymer film, scratching on plexiglass

ink, gesso, etched metal plate, scratch. gesso, ink, housepaint, scratching on hardboard