Don't BOX Me In

Andrea
Fillippone
ON BUXUS
Metro Hort
March 13, 2012

Andrea Fillippone is obsessed with a plant, I don't care for.  She is an expert on all things boxwood.  Andrea propagates it, goes on plant expeditions searching for it, and uses it in all its forms and cultivars in her own garden and others she designs.

I understand obsession.  I sympathize with anyone who has a plant compulsion, infatuation or mania.  Fixating on 'Glencoe', 'Green Beauty', 'Green Mound', 'Green Velvet', or 'Wintergreen'; I can relate.  When I worked as a graphic designer, I often challenged myself to use one typeface and only one typeface on a job.  When a typeface is well designed, it has myriad possibilities, even though it's ONE typeface.  I suppose the same can be said of one genus, which has 70 species. 

Andrea Fillippone lives on a large estate in New Jersey.  Her gardens are traditional.  She uses boxwood as designers have for hundreds of years, to define areas, create edges and add winter color.  She also uses 'Dee Runk', 'Green Pillow', 'Morris Dwarf', Morris Midget', 'Jensen' and her favorite, 'Justin Brouwers' in unusual ways.  She is not a big shearer.  She groups cultivars -  very dwarf, upright and medium together. She enjoys the variety of leaf, density and color(yes, boxwoods have different shades of green). And perhaps, most importantly she treats all her gardens organically.

Andrea's  passion for boxwood could be infectious, but I have a strong immune system.  In my mind, even unclipped; it's still a plant wrapped in formality, with a history it can't escape.  In the hands of a more unconventional designer, boxwood might be used in a way that makes me stand up and take notice.

After the Metrohort meeting, I walked up Fifth Avenue to get my bus crosstown.  Almost every single "garden" in front of the apartment houses on Fifth, contain 90% boxwood.  Some are sheared into rows, some are rounded, a few are fastigiata, but all maintain that look of neatness and uniformity demanded by the street.  Craving order, but living in chaos, I can't wrap my head around Buxus.

This Could Be Something...

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.

I can't.  There are too many.

Unless you have been hiding on Pakistan/Afghanistan border, you know that the Whitney Biennial has been lauded over by every critic on the planet.

What do I have to say about it?

I love it too.

Sign in Dawn Kasper's Studio at the Whitney Biennial

I love thee
to the level of every day's
Most quiet need...

every day's...

Tom Thayer

Elaine Reichek

ELAINE REICHEK
We Construct A Narrative
In a way, the title sums up the entire Whitney Biennial.  Everyone in the show is constructing a narrative.  Sometimes, I could understand the narrative and sometimes not.  It didn't really matter.  It was compelling, nevertheless. 

 

DAWN KASPAR (in cap) is the epicenter of the exhibition.  She is on site, living in her studio for the entire length of the show.  She is an artist, and a great performer.  Dawn talks to anyway who wishes to engage with her.  She is one of the those people whose face exudes openness and generosity.  Dawn seems to genuinely want to talk to you about ANYTHING.  The everyday is the heart of her gig.  The sign on the wall of her studio (see above) captures the paradigm of the show .

JOHN KELSEY:  What could be more "everyday" than this work by John Kelsey.  Here is part of the description of his piece:

"John Kelsey is an art critic,  gallery director, and member of the artists' collective Bernadette Corporation;...

All the text here has been culled from spam emails received by the artist.  The lists of names indicate the emails' senders, the titles are drawn from the subject lines..."

 NICOLE EISENMAN is one of the few painters in the Biennial.  Her style (figurative) are about our obsessions.  Her work made me laugh.

CAMERSON CRAWFORD
Sick Sic Six Sic ((Not) Moving:  Seagullssssssssssssssssss
From the text on the wall about this piece

"...Cameron Crawford's response to the deaths of six people he knew.  His ability to fully understand their significancde to him is reflected in his use of homophones (word that are pronounced alike but which differ in meaning) that skirt the edge of comprehension, as well as in the near -immateriality of this "invisible curtain, made of invisible blocks,"...

So what was interesting besides...

This Life is Nothing More Than Waiting for the Sky To Open
Fluid Employment
Break UP
There is No Need
There is No Place Like Home

Hearsay...

At the Biennial traditional paintings or sculptures are in small supply.   Made objects, made with very low tech materials are de rigeur.  Between the turntables, cardboard, duck tape, string, photographs of discarded letters, it seems that art has come back to the making of objects.  And this is one of the reasons I loved the Biennial.  It uses the everyday to make the extraordinary.
 

Dig It!

2012 PHILADELPHIA INTERNATIONAL
FLOWER SHOW
Hawaii

Island of Aloha
March 4-11, 2012

This year I decided to take a different tack.  I followed my nose instead of my eyes.  I walked right past the Orchidaceae, including Dendrobium, Pleurothallis and Bulbophyllum.  There is one thing you can say about a plot of Hyacinth, the smell is overwhelming.  Next door to the harbinger of Spring was a large crowd. I walked over to see what the fuss was about.

We are beginning to start cleaning up our Urban Farm on Randall's Island from yearly Winter debris.  Our numbers are not as large as City Harvest, but they speak to how far a few good plants can go.

He's no WALLflower!

The ORCHID Show
New York Botanical Garden

Patrick Blanc's 

Vertical Walls 
Through April 12

You can blame it on Patrick Blanc.  He is the guy that took vertical walls from being  rare to ubiquitous.  The current orchid show at the NYBG is fabulous, for once.  I go to the show every year and come away feeling the beauty of the plants, but not being inspired by the design.  This year is different.

NYBG hired Blanc to design vertical walls of orchids for the show.  Blanc is a plant geek.  Just look at the map of the one of his plantings.  There over 250 species.

 He is also a botanist, whose specialty is tropical plants.  After scouring most of the tropical places on the globe; Blanc studied how plants grow in their natural eco-systems .... vertically, on walls, on limestone, in cracks, in understory situations with humidity. 

But there is more than just vertical magic.  His walls are about the texture, structure and architecture of leaves. Although the show at NYBG is in the conversatory and  limited in scale and design (to orchids), you can still see of the genuis of Blanc. It's worth $20.

At a lecture for members, Blanc walked on stage with streaks of green in his hair and screaming abstract design of leaves on his shirt and spoke for an hour and fifteen minutes without taking a breath (at least it seemed so).  I was exhausted and pumped by the end.  The perfect way to enter the show.

Begonia blancii 

(sect. Diplolinium, Begoniaceae)
a new species endemic to the 

Phillippine island of Palawain.

Get Down On Your Hands and Knees

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

WRITING THE GARDEN

Horticultural Society of New York
Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Petulant

Aggressive

Self-involved
Beleaguered

Phobic 

Stressed

Is this the description of a patient on a psychiatrist's couch or the psychological profile of a garden writer?

As Elizabeth Barlow Rogers read excerpts from her book, I compiled a list of mental disorders.

Diagnosis:

HOARDING of plants, 

GUILTY over extreme shopping 

HYSTERICAL about predators in the garden

Risk syndromes: 
Over-use of the internet
Obessive reading of nursery catalogs
Persistent fear of choosing the wrong species
Resentment of native plants

Paralysis and inertia over making a mistake
Early warning signs:
Anxiety (not being able to read all the gardening books on your shelf)
Low Self-Esteem (combined with garden envy)
Jealousy (I want what they have)
Panic over lack of temperature control (early frost, drought, high heat)
Fear of marauders (voles, deer, squirrels, slugs)
Stress over fungus, virus and other diseases
Disorders:
Obsessive compulsive disorder
Phobias traced to a specific triggering event, often in childhood
Cure All:
Instead of reading excerpts from garden writers, find a used bookstore (not an easy task), walk to the back(that is where you will find the garden books), dust off the bindings(most of these tomes have been on the shelf for years), sit on the floor, find a volume that appeals to you,  pay a small sum and place the book next to your bed and see if you care to open it.  If you are in need of something humorous to cheer you up,  try Reginald Farrer's, A Rage for Rock Gardening.

No matter what book you choose, I can guarantee one thing.  Books of garden writing are an antidote for insomnia.

and ... TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!