LAND ART DAY OCTOBER 15, 2022
SEBASTOPOL
Participants: Laura Abrams, Sally Allen, Sherman Chan, Marguerite Elliot, Anna Friesen, Gideon Intrator, Kay Kang, Priscilla Otani, Eleanor Ruckman, Rachel Tirosh, Irma Velasquez, John Woodbury, Marina Woodbury, Renate Woodbury, and Sesame. Photo by Sally Allen.
RACHEL TIROSH |
PRISCILLA OTANI |
|
My main project was inspired by the bamboo grove. My idea was to create an enclosed area, like a nest within the bamboo. I used twine to mark the area. Then I used the dry 'naked ladies' stems that were available in the garden. I weaved them between the twine. I managed to create two nests. The first one I worked on with my husband. Anna Friesen finished the second one. We then moved to help Marguerite with her centennial tower.
Video of Rachel creating her nest in the bamboo. |
I created four windchimes from waxed paper cups, paper, leaves, thread and buttons to be hung inside an umbrella-shaped white mulberry tree. My first chime was far too elaborate and time-consuming to make. Although it was prettily decorated in colorful Chinese paper I realized there would not be enough time to make three others like it. The next three chimes were more austere, mostly put together with Japanese mulberry paper with calligraphy written on it. I picked up some scarlet-colored leaves and sewed them together for ornamentation. The soundless clappers were made of mother of pearl buttons and red silk embroidery threads with red Avery dots scattered here and there. After the chimes were hung in the four corners of the mulberry tree, I stood inside its downward curving branches and imagined the music played by the elements…wind, rain, fog and sunshine. Made of fragile materials, these silent chimes will soon fall away and become part of the earth. Will I see any traces the next time I visit this tree?
|
LAURA ABRAMSOne of Irma's ideas was to have a ground mural created on a cement circle, in preparation for a possible future permanent artwork in that spot. I brought some chalk and also used natural elements and pebbles from around the property. The design started with a center circle with squiggly lines reaching outwards. A circle tends to indicate a symmetrical design, so I worked to make it less predictable and more organic looking. The segments that are divided by the curved lines are not all the same size or shape. Colors radiate out to the edges in various textures and lines, some blurred and others more stark. It looks pastel and light from a distance. A circle around the edge is made of pebbles. I used sawgrass flowers and grape leaves to finish the design. Perhaps it could be a breast plate or a shield. During the presentation, Sesame the dog lay in the middle--he certainly enjoyed being in the center and I appreciated the reminder that as land art, this is an impermanent part of the landscape.
|
ANNA FRIESEN“Sun Dial,” my Land Art Day piece, is a tribute to the forces of nature; a totem in honor of the cycles of life and the seasons: seed, growth, fruiting, drying, scattering of seeds. The visible elements are a sunflower stalk, wood shards wrapped in grass, a decaying pumpkin, small, overripe apples. The invisible element is the seeds of “Love in the Mist, a self seeding annual that produces small blue flowers and incredible seedpods. (See the closeup of the sunflower stalk.) The earth’s wind and rain are my silent partner in the piece, as the wind might topple the sunflower stalk, and rain will most probably blur the spiral and circle in which I planted seeds. Annually, these seeds will reinvent my Land Art piece.
The plan for my piece unfolded organically as I selected the site and worked with the dirt. The sunflower stalk (from a ‘volunteer sunflower’ - probably planted by a Scrub Jay) is the focal point; the mound around it holds the pumpkin and apples. To define the area more clearly, I used a leaf rake, in the style of raking stones in a Zen garden, to create a large circle of concentric lines. Atypical of a Zen garden, I left small mounds of earth in the raked area. These mounds took on meaning as the spokes of the wheel of life, a Mayan calendar, or a medicine wheel. “Sun Dial” is left to the whims of the elements and the seasons. |
MARGUERITE ELLIOT"Garden Sentinel"
My Sentinels stand guard and keep watch over the environment. This one stands in the center of a beautiful labyrinth. Irma Velasquez described it as resembling the enneagram “Portals Holding Earth.” |
ELEANOR RUCKMANMARINA WOODBURY |
THE LABYRINTH
|
|
|
