Art in the garden has freedoms and challenges. We have to expect nature to intervene: the elements will work upon the piece long after the artist has put down her tools. Continue reading
Tag: Art
Street Art, Key West, Florida Keys
A pink and turquoise kraken seizes a sailing boat
Kraken are giant, predatory sea creatures from the North, something like an octopus or squid. This one has, not unusually for its sort, seized hold of a passing sail boat and now has the terrified mariners at its mercy (unless, as we cannot see any onboard, they were all partying onshore when the kraken sneaked into the harbour). It’s a detail from a painting on a hotel car park wall we stopped to admire.
Strictly speaking, the second is fence art. It’s a detail too, of a large design featuring birds, animals and vegetation that runs around the back patio of a restaurant in Key West. It’s worth reading this one upwards, so you get used to each level of the story before taking the next leap.
Pink flamingos painted on a fence
First, leafy foliage with two pink flamingos. So far so good. They wear a decorative form of eye makeup. One is wearing a coronation crown that Queen Elizabeth II would not be ashamed of (it looks lighter than her own). The artist has added a scroll and swirl design to add movement and break up the background. A space craft is leaving the scene to fly off into a universe of stars. Continue reading
Sculpting With Wool: Debie Deaton, Mixed Media Artist
Crow, bug, goldfish and tealfish wool art waiting for new homes
At Chimneyville Arts Festival in Jackson last year, one stand was a Shakespearean comedy, full of colour, reverie, laughter and life. Was it just in my imagination that Falstaff, Feste, Caliban and The Man In The Moon cavorted with felt acrobats, goofy-looking puppets, elves, Pod people, birds, bees and bugs?
Insect with beautifully detailed wings
Art bugs
A lady dressed in a bright jacket sat quietly by the stand, rising to greet visitors with a Duchenne smile. This was Debie Deaton, a member of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi. Continue reading
Something To Raise A Smile
This patchwork of art squares by children (to inspire us to eat more healthily) was part of the Royal Horticultural Society’s campaign for school gardening at the Tatton Park Flower Show.
It has the side effect of making me smile whenever I look at it.
Spacedawg!
I’m sharing this spacedawg advertising art for Becky’s Spiky MarchSquares. Someone may have de-spiked the picket fence, but luckily for me, the light gleams are spiky. Continue reading
Ragtag Challenge: Air
I ought to warn you that I intend to approach this challenge in a free and easy fashion, anticipating that my blogging buddy, Margaret, who set it, won’t mind in the least. So this street entertainer may have had a little help to get himself up in the air… Continue reading
Playing With Wool
Wool and metal bug by Debie Deaton
Debie Deaton sculpts with wool, creating colourful, upscale toys and puppets like this little bug. I met her at Mississippi’s Chimneyville Arts Festival earlier in the month and was immediately taken by her lovingly made, character-infused creations. A whole booth of these animated figures, each one unique, but all united by her humorous house style, is a carnival. Continue reading
Wordless Wednesday: Pebble Art
The School Gardens at RHS Tatton Park Flower Show
I mentioned in an earlier post how much I enjoyed seeing the children’s gardens at Tatton Park. This is why! I’ll let the gardens speak for themselves, pretty much – there were too many lovely touches to point them all out.
Fragile
Visitors who walk through the woodland at Ian Hamilton Finlay’s old home, Little Sparta, in Scotland, happen upon a mossy tombstone placed at an angle between the ferns. Like many of Little Sparta’s artworks – paths, blocks, even beehives – it bears an inscription. Continue reading
Ness Botanic Garden Penguin: Grow Your Own
Placed like an invocation in a winter vegetable garden is a penguin with a story to tell. On last month’s visit, this part of Ness Botanic Garden was looking (I won’t say sorry for itself, as it was well-tended) out of season. It wasn’t going to feed a family of four any time soon, though nature being what it is, I’m sure magic was taking place under the soil.
For plenty, we had to look to the surrealist style painting of fruit, roots, leaves and tubers that covered the surface of the bird. I spotted onions, cauliflowers, garlic, parsnips, garden peas, carrots, sweet and hot peppers, grapes, lemon, marrow, fennel, cabbage, broccoli, aubergine, lettuce, gourds and an assortment of mushrooms, but that’s not all, by any means. I’m glad nobody needs to find shoes to fit our penguin’s sweetcorn and celery stick feet. Continue reading
Life In Clay: Mixed Media Artist, Harold W. Miller
I’m a fan of Harold Miller, a contemporary sculptor, who works in mixed media with a focus on clay and ceramics. His largest works are staged on 3D surrounds that have more in common with a theatre set than a traditional frame. Heads and figures, often embellished with tin or jewellery, emerge from textural backgrounds made from clay, stone and/or beautifully stained driftwood.
These two smaller figures show Harold’s technique and storytelling ability. The figures look self-contained, but their silence is lyrical. The man above is one in a series of wind figures wearing stylised, windswept cloaks. It’s almost impossible for the viewer not to imagine the story of his life, as if the clay could have its own history.
But when I first saw Harold’s work exhibited at Chimneyville Crafts Festival, it was this lady, captured in prayer, that I admired most. Her slim frame seems vulnerable and she is rapt in her faith. Though she is made of clay, she overflows with humanity. I can’t tell you her story, but I seem to feel the strength of her heart.
J. W. Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs: A Modern Debate
The Manchester Art Gallery recently removed what is probably their best-loved painting ‘to prompt conversation’. The story of Hylas and the Nymphs dates back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans and has come down to us in a variety of tellings which means the story can be interpreted more than one way. I like J.W. Waterhouse’s painting of the subject and was sorry to learn it had been taken from view.
Controversy was intensified by this Guardian interview with the curator Claire Gannaway which included the quote:
“We think it probably will return, yes, but hopefully contextualised quite differently. It is not just about that one painting, it is the whole context of the gallery.”
By the time my sweetheart and I called in to the gallery earlier this week, the picture had been replaced, now above a sea of post-it notes.
Nicolas Party at Jupiter Artland: Cafe Party
A glimpse of colourful, funky, arboriscape walls from across the courtyard was enough to capture my attention, and draw me in. What followed was a ‘woo hoo!’ moment – it only gets better inside. Continue reading
