DryStoneGarden

EuroDrawing2

EuroDrawing1

EuroDrawing3

EuroDrawing4

EuroDrawing5

EuroDrawing6

EuroDrawing21

EuroDrawing7

EuroDrawing36

EuroDrawing19

EuroDrawing8

EuroDrawing9

EuroDrawing13

EuroDrawing17

EuroDrawing19

EuroDrawing35

EuroDrawing30

EuroDrawing34

EuroDrawing10

EuroDrawing26

EuroDrawing23

EuroDrawing25

EuroDrawing18

EuroDrawing14

EuroDrawing24

EuroDrawing12

EuroDrawing27

EuroDrawing38

EuroDrawing11

I did another bicycle trip this summer, riding from Amsterdam to Italy. Fun times. I started in Dutch canal and windmill country, rode down through Belgium, bits of France, Luxembourg and Germany, then to Basel, Zurich, and Innsbruck, and then down through the Dolomites to just outside Venice. I went through 9 countries all told, though that includes just 20 minutes crossing Liechtenstein. I took lots of photos of gardens and stone along the way which I’ll be showing in the future. For now, these are my drawings from the trip.
Read the rest of this entry »

Piet Oudolf on the PBS Newshour and then a longer documentary from Holland (turn on the Closed Captioning if, like me, you don’t speak Dutch). The Newshour has some nice looks at his drawings. The Dutch documentary has a fun scene of him squabbling with contractors at a jobsite. My favorite quote: ‘I always enter like a kind of evil spirit at the last moment.’

Nobuo Sekine Interview: Sensibility of a Rock from Louisiana Channel on Vimeo.

‘One day, as one large rock that was on the ground was being lifted into the air — at that exact moment — I had an epiphany that this action had changed the meaning of its existence’ Nabuo Sekine

Japanese Sculptor Nobuo Sekine passed away a few days ago. He was one of the originators of Mono-Ha, a conceptual art movement from the late sixties that I find interesting but elusive, I’m hesitant to even try to describe it, other than to say that a lot of it has roots in the Japanese rock garden tradition. There are other influences at play as well, but I recognize elements of both the rock garden philosophy and craft, and kindred ideas about materials and context and spatial relationships. A lot of Sekine’s works use found objects, frequently those found objects are stones, and, as can be seen in this video, a lot of his work seem to have its origin in the artist standing and staring at a stone and meditating on how to transform it into a work of art.

In Switzerland I saw my first staddle stones, one of the more charming dry stone elements that humans have devised. Staddle stones are the round caps on each of the stubby posts that raise the barns off the ground, acting like a collar to keep rodents from climbing up into the barns.

In Switzerland I think they are most common in the side valleys of the Valais. These photos are from Saas Fee and Randa, near Zermatt. Read the rest of this entry »

Along with Castelvecchio, my other favorite castle/museum in Italy is the Messner Mountain Museum at Firmian near Bolzano. I was restrained about taking photos at most of the castles and museums I visited, but I indulged myself at this one. Everything about it — the site, the historic stone architecture, the modern intervention, and the art collection within it — is top class.

The castle sits on a wonderful hill with formations of columnar porphyritic rock; it commands a great view over the countryside and would be a ‘power spot’ in most cultures. The castle itself dates back to 945 AD, with a rich history thru the intervening years. The restoration and adaptation is wonderfully done, most of the additions created with beautiful reddish steel; a tunnel was cut through the rock in one place and an amphitheater carved into the hillside in another. And Messner’s collection of art, statuary, and alpine memorabilia is interesting, varied but linked by the themes of mountains and mountain mythology.

The whole ensemble is a pastiche — Tibetan prayer flags on an Italian castle, Indian deities on midieval defensive walls, Buddha’s disciples in a defensive tower — but a fascinating pastiche, and one that Messner earned the right to create it as arguably the greatest mountaineer in history, a Tyrolean who climbed in Nepal. It’s not for purists, and I’m not going to argue with anyone who calls it a rich guy’s vanity project, but I loved it. Beautiful hill, beautiful castle, beautiful restoration, beautiful collection. An excess of photos are below. Read the rest of this entry »

After Brion I visited Castelvecchio Museum, one of Carlo Scarpa’s other masterpieces, a beautiful restoration of a 14th century castle. Scarpa did a masterful job of revealing the historic architecture while adapting it to its new use as a museum. Like Brion, it’s been written about a great deal; Carlo Scarpa/Museum of Castelvecchio is one example that can be read online. I loved the building, but I was also fascinated by how he displayed the stone sculptures in the museum. I don’t usually pay a great deal of attention to this kind of figurative and religious statuary, but some of the ones at Castelvecchio are particularly expressive and Scarpa did a terrific job of displaying them. Almost every one has some touch from Scarpa to make the piece better. This statue of Jesus is a brilliant composition, immeasurably better because of the window. It’s lit like a Vermeer.

It might be the most anguished single stone I’ve ever seen. Apparently it was originally placed at the entrance to a leprosy hospital, the idea being to remind everyone that no matter how much the people with leprosy might suffer, Jesus suffered more.

Displayed across from the Jesus statue, Scarpa placed a statue of Mary collapsing as she witnesses her son’s suffering. The chiaroscuro lighting, emphasizing her face dropping into shadow and the crumpling S curve of her body, is straight from a Renaissance painting. Read the rest of this entry »