Blue Flowers: Life and Art
Nine Barbara Hepworth Quotes (With Pictures)
In normal times, a permanent collection of Barbara Hepworth’s work can be seen in the St Ives garden she so evidently loved. Although the garden remains on shutdown, a wide range of material is available online (see the links below). Her work fits wonderfully well into its Cornish setting, within striking distance of ancient standing stones such as Mên-an-Tol, Lanyon Quoit and the Kenidjack Common Holed Stones. Continue reading “Nine Barbara Hepworth Quotes (With Pictures)”
Ai Weiwei’s Iron Tree (2013)
‘Iron Tree comprises 99 elements cast in iron… interlocked using a classic – and here exaggerated – Chinese method of joining, with prominent nuts and screws.’
From the Yorkshire Sculpture Park notes
Glimpsed from a distance, Ai Weiwei’s fake trees pass as real, but dead. As you draw closer, your mind engages with the forms and construction and questions arise. What is it? Why is it? Are the branches actually roots? Is it wood? Continue reading “Ai Weiwei’s Iron Tree (2013)”
Vertical Form (St Ives) By Barbara Hepworth With Reflections
I do like this picture, although it has as many accidental elements as purposeful ones: layers, patterns, textural contrasts and red herrings.
Although I lined the sculpture up reasonably well with the r/h edge of the frame, the reflections make it look all catawampus. That doesn’t just allow me to use the word my sweetheart taught me (we would say ‘skew whiff’) but it also makes the picture seem more abstract. That seems fitting.
I tried cropping closer, but prefer the picture with the distractions in. They have an unsettling effect and they provide context for a bronze sculpture that has St Ives in its name.
I suspect the reflections of the houses humanise the bronze more than if the clean lines of a gallery were behind it. The sculpture seems to gaze out, watchfully or wistfully.
The colour combination is muted – natural stone, grey, plus a languid take on the traditional blue and white that symbolises Cornwall – helping the gleaming sculpture hold its own visually in the gallimaufry. Continue reading “Vertical Form (St Ives) By Barbara Hepworth With Reflections”
A’net by Brenda Jet at Broomhill Sculpture Garden
A’net by Brenda Jet was one of the installations we were able to get up close and personal with during our stay at Broomhill Art Hotel and Sculpture Garden in Muddiford, North Devon. The garden is a naturalistic one that runs alongside a stream, through a meadow and in the woodland of a steep-sided valley.
Brenda Jet collects plastic waste, such as tangled fisherman’s twine which she patiently cleans, unravels, then winds into neat balls of raw material. The finished sculpture is felt-like, colourful and textural. Continue reading “A’net by Brenda Jet at Broomhill Sculpture Garden”
Reflections on Glass: Fräbel in the Garden
Clowns helter skelter after each other in what, we sense, ought to be an ordered line, but just isn’t. Embodied verbs, they pose, plunge, stumble, balance, strut, slip, bow and clamber, one or other body part defying gravity in that frozen moment to anchor the whole. Straight backs lend them dignity even as they take risks and cavort. We’re in the whimsical world of flamework glass artist, Hans Godo Fräbel, as seen at the Naples Botanical Garden, Florida, earlier this year. Continue reading “Reflections on Glass: Fräbel in the Garden”
Anatomy of Colour by Sarah Emily Porter
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 “Anatomy of Colour by Sarah Emily Porter”
