At the National Portrait Gallery, where I visited the new Obama portraits, it’s not ALL presidents and other known faces on view there. In fact, the “Sweat of their Face” exhibit is just the opposite; it “combines art and social history with representations of American laborers across genres and centuries of art.” Among portraits of laborers – a […]
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Posted by
Susan Harris on March 14, 2018 at 9:52 am This post has 10 responses.
Flowers have left the building, as far as the Olympics are concerned. In Rio (2016), medalists were given little sculptures made of resin, polyresin, and PVC, because flowers were “not sustainable.” And this year, in Pyeongchang, the athletes are waving little stuffed animals (tigers) from the podium. There are...
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Elizabeth Licata on February 15, 2018 at 9:24 am This post has 2 responses.
I drove to Cherokee Park’s Big Rock Pavilion, adjacent to Beargrass Creek, on Friday afternoon, anticipating a profusion of white bonesets, blue dayflowers and lingering yellow wingstems. I wasn’t disappointed. But there was more. A hundred yards downstream, I could make out rock sculptures—dozens of them. They looked, from...
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Posted by
Allen Bush on September 27, 2017 at 7:36 am This post has 9 responses.
Guest Rant by Alan Burke I was asked a few years ago to put together a landscape design for a historic school in Seattle. Wrapping the bases of the building’s large Corinthian columns with Bears breech (Acanthus mollis), I pointed out to the client that Acanthus was the plant...
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Alan Burke
on August 2, 2017 at 8:25 am This post has 3 responses.
Contest Closed! “Plant the Seeds, Frame the Art!” When Ken Greene founded the Hudson Valley Seed Library a dozen years ago at the Gardiner (NY) Library, it was the first seed library hosted by any public library in the United States. The concept was that patrons could borrow...
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Posted by
Thomas Christopher on February 1, 2016 at 7:58 am This post has 29 responses.
There is an abandoned fencerow on our Salvisa, Kentucky, farm. It’s marked clearly. A dozen black walnut trees Juglans nigra grow in a straight line, running up a small hill toward the rising sun. A generation ago, squirrels stored thousands of walnuts and forgot about them. The trees,...
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Posted by
Allen Bush on December 23, 2015 at 8:36 am This post has 7 responses.
Just stop by one of Jenny Kendler’s seed stations, located at strategic spots on Buffalo’s East Side, as well as other Western New York locations, and grab a pack of seeds. The project, titled Rewilding New York, is intended to reintroduce native plants to the urban center, providing sustenance...
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Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on August 11, 2015 at 8:53 am This post has 4 responses.
Recently I came across this article about the fairly new practice of stacking rocks in wild places. Historically, cairns (rocks piled or stacked by humans) have served important purposes, particularly in parts of the world lacking dramatic natural features to use as landmarks. A cairn might mark a trail,...
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Posted by
Evelyn Hadden on July 15, 2015 at 4:00 am This post has 24 responses.
Among all the many seed distribution strategies I’ve seen discussed or proposed, this one is both simple and beautiful. Jenny Kendler’s Milkweed Dispersal Balloons project consists of a mobile unit towing a flotilla of balloons filled with milkweed seed. As the artist says on her website: The artist and...
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Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on May 26, 2015 at 8:10 am This post has 9 responses.
After a few swipes on Aunt Polly’s plank fence, Tom Sawyer tired of painting whitewash. So it doesn’t surprise me that there’s no hint, in Mark Twain’s novel, that Tom took a paintbrush to tree trunks. I have been intrigued with this peculiar cultural phenomenon since I was Tom...
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Posted by
Allen Bush on March 11, 2015 at 7:43 am This post has 13 responses.
Holy Sissinghurst, Batman!!! There is a way of making gardens that I feel has run its course. It has reached its zenith, its apex, its apotheosis. It can go no further. It has gone far enough. Too far. I speak of the Outdoor Room. Let me be clear....
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Posted by
Ivette Soler on January 28, 2015 at 10:33 am This post has 29 responses.
A new memorial opened last month in D.C., this one honoring Veterans Disabled for Life. I’ve watched its progress from the U.S. Botanic Gardens across the street, and seen it presented to a reviewing agency, so was excited to finally see it open. Here’s a fun 2-minute video of...
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Posted by
Susan Harris on November 13, 2014 at 8:52 pm This post has 12 responses.
For just this month a 6-acre strip of lawn on the National Mall has been turned into a portrait in sand and dirt by Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada called “Out of Many, One.” Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, it’s a composite of many ethnic groups, a generic face of Americans. About...
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Posted by
Susan Harris on October 16, 2014 at 8:32 pm This post has 4 responses.
Wandering around Pittsburgh I came upon this fabulous mural depicting cherry blossoms in bloom and a charming collection of old homes. It was off the beaten track, enlivening not a park but the parking lot for a neighborhood restaurant. How does something so wonderful get done, anyway? By an...
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Posted by
Susan Harris on September 4, 2014 at 4:57 pm This post has 19 responses.
This year’s international Park(ing) Day falls on September 19, a mere two weeks from now. On that day, individuals, groups, and businesses in cities around the world will commandeer on-street parking spaces and convert them to temporary parklets. These people-friendly spaces might include plants, seating, bike parking, games, exercise...
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Posted by
Evelyn Hadden on September 3, 2014 at 3:08 am This post has 3 responses.
From my recent stay in Pittsburgh I’ve shown you Randyland, which writer/adventurers Susan Reimer, Ginny Smith, Carrie Engel and I stumbled upon while playing hooky from hotel conference rooms. We were on our way to another destination, installation-art gallery the Mattress Factory, which had been called a “must-see” by keynote speaker...
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Posted by
Susan Harris on September 2, 2014 at 3:03 pm This post has 7 responses.
Is a particular plant a weed? Is a garden a work of art? And who gets to decide? If you’ve read our recent rantings, you’ve likely noticed these questions do not have simple answers. The answers vary, depending on the gardener. Many gardeners (like me) learn their land slowly....
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Posted by
Evelyn Hadden on July 2, 2014 at 3:09 am This post has 21 responses.
The Royal Hort Society is holding a debate I’d love to hear. The topic is: “Are Gardens Art?” and get a load of the line-up of debaters — a critic, a designer, a plantsperson and a philosopher: Andrew Wilson (Chair of the debate panel) – Award winning Garden Designer,...
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Garden Rant on June 17, 2014 at 1:40 pm This post has 25 responses.
For decades,Washingtonians have known about a Marc Chagall mosaic in the back garden of a private residence in Georgetown and have strained to see mere glimpses of it from over the garden wall. Homeowner Evelyn Nef and her husband had been great friends with the Chagalls, who spent summers...
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Posted by
Susan Harris on May 23, 2014 at 8:21 am This post has 3 responses.
Just in time for local wildflower season (finally), the Burchfield Penney Art Museum is mounting a show of Charles Burchfield’s early botanical drawings. Along with them, they have the models made by another artist, Paul Marchand, who specialized in dioramas and other 3D displays for the local science museum’s...
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Posted by
Elizabeth Licata on May 6, 2014 at 7:07 am This post has 2 responses.
