Daily Poetics

There are two types of people - those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are.

Link: Square Room

Title Quote: Frederick Collins

Works by Leif Holland

If there were dreams to sell, what would you buy?

Link: Géraldine Gonzalez - Créatrice et illustratrice en volume. 

Geraldine GONZALEZ

"A graduate of the Duperre School of Applied Arts ­Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Appliques Duperre (textile section), Geraldine Gonzalez started her career as a  shoe designer before becoming a sculptor. In the past her work has been used as illustrations in advertising, the press and children’s books, and shown in both personal and group exhibitions in several Paris museums (Grand Palais,  Menagerie de Verre, Halle Saint-Pierre, Georges-Pompidou, etc.).Today her focus is on home and storefront decoration. Geraldine Gonzalez likes some materials better than others, but papier maché,  cloth, crushed glass and pearls have gradually made way for the prince, crystal paper, a material with a lovely name that allows her to delicately play with transparency and light.  With this precious ally, Geraldine cultivates her secret garden, overflowing with tenderness and poetry, where she raises subtle figurine lamps, chrysalides, Chinese votives and exquisite fashion accessories (lingerie, hats, gloves, shoes...),  all of which have quite naturally been displayed at the marketplace: Bon Marche, the Printemps Haussmann, Home Autour du Monde, chez Mint, Liberty (London) Tommorrowland (Tokyo) and the John Derian Company ( New York).  She has also worked with Christian Lacroix, Sonia Rykiel, Chantal Thomass, and with Hilton Mc Connico for Hermes, Baccarat, Van Cleef et Arpels and Givenchy.  Her most recent creations, imprints of mystery and fragility seem to emerge from an enchanted forest. Her giant trees house shimmering amulets, burning bushes, bearers of charms and spells and a score of other living, curious ­ and magic ­  plant creatures." -Geraldine Gonzalez

Title Quote: Thomas Lovell Beddoes

 

...The forest murmurs allude to us...

Link: tanya aguiñiga - furniture.
Title Quote: Octavio Paz

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field ... I'll meet you there ... When the soul lies down in that grass - the world is too full to talk about. -Rumi

Link: Inhabitat » TORD BOONTJE FLOWER RUG for Nanimarquina.

"The recent collaboration between star Dutch designer Tord Boontje and the uber-hip Spanish rug company Nanimarquina is truly a great combination- like chocolate and mint, or peanut butter and jelly. The two independently-fabulous design entities have joined forces to create the playfully genius Little Field Of Flowers rug, whose floral shaggy tendrils are just as endearing as they are warm and fuzzy under your bare toes.""

Link: garden.

"The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen."

–Thomas Merton

"There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, lulled in these flowers with dances and delight" wrote Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Throughout history people have believed there to be a magical connection between the moon and nature. Even today, with a moon garden we can enjoy our garden in the twilight hours or in the evening's embrace. A landscape with white or bright yellow flowers, night blooming blossoms, and water and lighting features can offer a place of relaxation at the end of the day. Using one or all of these elements can create your own evening or moon garden. A moon garden can be in the most lavish of styles or done with the simplest lines, and should be considered for any garden design." -moon gardens

What would happen if there were a glad acceptance of the sensuous in all forms? If we could rediscover our hands, eyes and ears, our tongues and noses, and then enjoy them without embarrassment.

Link: Aspen no. 4, item 7: The Braille Trail.

"A self-guiding nature trail for the blind — both seeing and non-seeing — teaches us to comprehend the natural world through the purest form of communication — touch, smell, hearing — without first filtering it through sight.

The Aspen Braille Trail was built high up in the Independence Pass wilderness, at 10,400 feet, by a small band of Aspenites and White River Forest Service personnel. Robert B. Lewis, scientist, idealist and prime instigator of the trail, hopes that it will serve as an experimental trail that other communities can emulate — maybe some day there'll be "a network of such trails across the country in woodlands, along streams, in the mountains and even the deserts!"

We are informed at the outset that no poisonous plants, insects or reptiles inhabit this tract of land, which is to say that there are only good vibrations. Touch, taste and smell! Our sight has blinded us to many of the marvels of the natural world, since it has anesthetized our other senses. Oddly, the wonders of the natural world are even more wondrous when experienced without sight.

The 23 trail markers were written by Dr. Alfred Etter, naturalist and conservationist, and our picture captions are excerpted from them."

Quote:  Ben Thompson

Another Bloomin' Designer

Link: Jamie Wieck / Portfolio / Another Bloomin' Designer.

"For this project I set out to design a business card that a prospective client would want to keep on their table rather than in their pocket.

The result was a business card that worked like a miniature house-plant, growing alfalfa or cress when dipped in water - a business card for 'another bloomin' designer'.

The logo was also cut into a 'seed stencil' that allowed the logo to be grown on either earth or lawn; on uncut grass, the message would remain hidden until the area was mown." -JW

It is the case with some gardens as with societies; some things require to be fixed so that others can be placed ...

Link: Little Sparta Trust website.

"Set in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, Little Sparta is Ian Hamilton Finlay’s greatest work of art.

Imbued with a high idea content, the garden is created from the artistic fusion of poetic and sculptural elements with those of the natural landscape which is shaped and changed to become an inherent part of the concepts realised at Little Sparta.

While works of art are commonly viewed in galleries, public parks and streets, museums and private houses, it is perhaps a unique achievement to have created a garden which is itself a major artwork encompassing within it both horticultural elements and individual works in such materials as stone, wood and metal. Finlay’s intentions are moral and philosophical as well as poetic.

The themes dealt with in the garden are those which underlie the structures of society. The French Revolution, pre-Socratic views of the nature of the world. The Second World War, the sea and its fishing fleets are among the sources of metaphor and image which are realised in the garden’s art works which now number over 275..."

If solid happiness we prize/Within our breast this jewel lies/And they are fools who roam./The world has nothing to bestow;/From our own selves our joys must flow -nathaniel cotton

Link: frederikmolenschot.nl.   

Solid Poetry by Frederik Molenschot

When these concrete pavers become wet, the pattern within reveals itself...

There is nothing more cultural than our fantasies about nature. -Adam Phillips

Link: Rokeby.

  "Rokeby’s fourth exhibition of 2006 brings together two British artists whose practice stems from an interest in and investigation of drawing, the processes involved and the histories associated with it.

Tim Knowles creates drawings independent of his own hand, using elaborate apparatus or time consuming practices. Interested in the process of drawing Knowles invents experimental and playful procedures to introduce chance and unpredictability into his work. Often he will employ and expose mans relationship to nature, in an ongoing series which will feature in the exhibition, Knowles attaches pens to the tips of branches of various trees; placing paper in front of them he allows the chance movement of the wind to dictate the composition of the final drawing. The artist surrenders final control of the work, questioning the authority of the artist whilst allowing the fundamental and primordial characteristics associated with drawing to be communicated.

This acceptance of drawing as a process and an experimental medium allows Catherine Morland’s practice to investigate ways of seeing and to question the manner in which we view and order the world around us. Using smoke, soot, light and water, Morland’s work evokes the unstable quality of our vision. Drawings on glass are made with smoke, which are installed using light to project the images onto the wall, the projections of which appear fragile and temporal or as after images or recalled memories.

For Knowles it is crucial that the viewer understands the process of production and so he presents his homemade apparatus next to the drawings or includes documentation in an installation. The tree drawings are presented as diptychs, with the drawing displayed opposite a photo of the tree that created it. Morland too is keen to utilize manmade apparatus in her installations and projections in which she uses rotating, flickering and dissolving light to reveal fragments of an image. Like the physical act of drawing, immediacy is denied and the illusory quality of drawing is exposed."