Summer project thing two: Murals

Theme: Botanical: We will be using tree shadows and plants that grow on the site as a starting point in this multi faceted project. I prefer to make murals that are abstract in nature, less directly representational.  We will look at and discuss interpretive and scientific ways of drawing plants. If you have any suggestions or links, I'd love to hear about them in the comment section.

I am looking at fibinacci sequence as a way to spiral students and neighbors through the passages. That led to a ton of other mathematical research such as fractels and Mandelbrot sets. Not sure if I can or should insert that imagery, but it is stunning.

I'm also looking at the cellular structure of plants, I remember being blown away in a Botany class by the beauty and abstract qualities of the cross sectional slides. I'm going to try to gather some commonly known plants, like sunflowers, mint, corn and maple trees to use as layers or components of the spiral.

I also just went to an amazing exhibit at the American Philisophical Society, "Through the Looking Lens" on Cornelius Varley, he was an artist who made drawings and water colors of cross sections of plants. His color palate is definitely going to inform the choices that I make on site. I've always loved old hand drawn maps and botanical studies are becoming a close second. The second botanist that I am researching  is William Bartram,  we will go to the gardens at least once as a group. Here is some of the source imagery that I am looking at so far. Links will follow at the end.

Cornelius Varley

Mandelbrot Set

fibonacci Sequence

Bass wood Rings

Zea Maize (corn) root cross section

Architectural rendering by Henaghen Peng for the VA Museum

My chief collaborator is Kaitlin Pomerantz, who has been doing some great projects with "weed"/wild plant identification in Philadelphia.

through the looking lens

we the weeds

Bartrams Gardens

I start in one week, I know that I have 2 walls, (actually one building, a childcare center) and one smallish wall 9'high by 16' long. I will be working with a highschool team to create some of the imagery and to execute the murals. 

It's always a wild ride, stay tuned...

Summer Project: Thing One

There is a new Restored Spaces project starting at Shoemaker Mastery Charter School in West Philadelphia. I will act as the consultant on the art making concept, and do a quick summer project from July 1- July 19th.

You can learn more about the Restored Spaces initiative by following the link below. Many of my previous projects are documented there.

 Restored Spaces at Mural Arts

We partner with various city and national entities to promote environmental awareness and promote the interface of visual art with natural systems. In this case the plant life that is embedded into the streets and marginal places, and a new planting that will be bases on stories that we hope to collect from the elders in this community. Every culture has folkloric and medicinal uses for wild plants and herbs. We hope to add them into a mixed perreniel bed.

The other plants that we are researching are for pollinators, such as butterflies and bees, so we expect to use butterfly bushes, grasses, yarrow, mint, lavender, milkweed etc.

My hope for the garden is that it softens a 4 foot high berm around the school entrance, and becomes the seismic record of breezes, sunlight and shadow and seasonal changes.

View of School with mature trees and berm

The stone wall is about four feet high- imagine nasturtiums and grasses spilling over the edge.

Here are some source images:

Designing With Grasses: Neil Lucas

miscanthus in winter

Piet Oudolf

We have plans for 3 12 foot long x 2 foot deep beds. 

Here are some of the places that I have been for inspiration:

piet oudolf

butterfly gardens

the highline nyc

the discipline of presence

" I love all men who dive", wrote Herman Melville to a friend. "Any fish can swim near the surface but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; and if he don't attain the bottom, why all the lead in Galena can't fashion a plummet that will."

My friend and fellow artist Tim Hawkesworth quotes this in the beginning of one of his morning talks, before we head to our studios for a day of immersive drawing, painting, or hanging around looking at things.

I'm going through boxes that I never fully unpacked here, getting ready for another move. I have notebooks that date back to the mid 90's - at the beginning of the dive into an artist's life. I think I have been writing the same thing in notebook after notebook. It's kind of rediculous and comforting. So many lists, so many things that I can never undo.

The further I get into it, the deeper I go, the stronger the sense of urgency. To have and cultivate a kind and curious and disciplined life of paying attention, of being present.  And then this, this morning, on my facebook feed.

How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Presence Over Productivity

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur’s life a good one, or Thomas Mann’s?" Annie Dillard The Writing Life.