Issue #5

issue #5 I’m currently in my home town visiting with family. It’s a small, coastal, suburban rural mix of a town, located on the southern most point of New Jersey. It’s been a while since I’ve been ba issue #5 I’m currently in my home town visiting with family. It’s a small, coastal, suburban rural mix of a town, located on the southern most point of New Jersey. It’s been a while since I’ve been back here, and one of the things that’s been striking me most is how much the landscape of my youth has imprinted itself deep into my psyche. It’s as if the marshland, swaths of coastal grasses, dunes, dense cicadas at night and the thick humid air are what make this place feel like home. The roads and landmarks are seared into my mind in a way that sense memories are triggered each time I travel on them, and I feel some familiar and safe comfort. It’s been a nice reminder of the importance of place, and the vital role environments play in our experience. The places we exist are more than a container, they’re something richer and spilling over with meaning, with feeling really. Something bringing me joy Andy Goldsworthy Dandelion circle on bluebells Brough, Cumbria 4 June 1985 Andy Goldsworthy Dandelion flowers pinned with thorns to rosebay willowherb stalks held above the bluebells with bracken forks Brough, Cumbria 8 June 1985 Some things I’m thinking about Sound and Music as artistic endeavors tend to exist on opposite ends of a spectrum. On one end, there’s the ephemeral ( a performance), on the other is a snapshot of a moment in time (an album or recording). What’s rare, is something perpetually living. Maybe this is true of most art. An individual’s relationship to a painting may evolve over time, but the work itself is typically static, or at the very least a static representation of something, much like a recorded piece of music. Working in sound and music has always fallen a little flat for me for this reason. Largely restricted to an immaterial world, my work has tended to exist in the digital domain, where what I make dissolves into the void that is the internet and it’s constant stream of content, or in a pile of records collecting dust in my garage, poking my insecurity and low self esteem about not having enough “fans” to sell them all. I’ve never felt a sense of legacy or something greater than myself when working in this medium. It all seems to disintegrate the moment it’s made. Over the last 5 or so years, my creative pursuits and curiosity have led me to want to explore work that exists between those two extremes of stasis and ephemerality, making something that evolves over time on its own accord, and through my hands or a future caretaker, something alive and well. I’m intrigued by the potential of creating something that ages and matures and facilitates a constant back and forth collaboration and interaction, a dance really. Working with plants and landscapes as a medium seem to be scratching this itch for me lately, although I’ve just begun learning and exploring. There are the refrains I’m always drawn to explore in the creative process, which are on dramatic display when working with the landscape. One, is the freedom to relinquish some creative control - the plants do their thing as shaped by their growth habits and environment, and two, there’s an anticipation and excitement for what will be - the work will grow into itself, never complete, always changing, always evolving, always dying, always healing, always ripening. Some things I made In September 2020, my wife and I bought our first home, a little house in Portland built in 1940. The house is situated on almost a 1/4 acre, which, when we moved in, was pretty much just a lot of water-thirsty lawn with some border plantings, some nice dogwoods and lilacs and some larger maple trees. For the backyard, we envisioned and planned a design together that would break the yard up into different “rooms”, creating usable spaces as well as a sense of depth to foster curiosity. All of this with intention of nudging ourselves and guests to want to know what lays just behind sight and to curiously wander. For the first installment I designed and built a patio influenced by the “sunken living room” of the 1970s and Robert Irwin’s Tilted Planes in the late winter and spring of 2022. I wanted a space that would feel hidden away and cozy, carved into the landscape as if it’d always been there. I created an organic form (a sort of rounded/softened square), defined by a vertical timber retaining wall. Softness with materials that aren’t inherently soft is a theme I tend towards. For the plants I wanted a mass of drought tolerant grasses that would grow into each other overtime and create a mass moving, textured privacy wall, while remaining light and airy. I imagined the sound of this mass of grasses in the wind and the insects they’d inevitably invite. The project focuses on 3 different plants: Festuca Mairei, Stipa Pulchra and a single ‘Austin Griffiths’ Manzanita (Arctostaphylos x ‘Austin Griffiths’) that will grow to be 9’ x 7’ in time, it’s deep red mahogany branches muscular and stretching like arms. This project, along with other gardens around the house, have allowed me to begin exploring some of the themes I discussed in the section above. The hope is to continue exploring these ideas thru further projects in my own gardens, and hopefully expanding beyond that in the future. Final patio and plantings Table and bench made out of juniper from eastern Oregon ‘Austin Griffiths’ Manzanita (Arctostaphylos x ‘Austin Griffiths’) before Some things I’m listening to Claire Rousay A Softer Focus Adrienn Lenker Songs Andrew CS & Glia Nimi Prev / Next You must select a collection to display.