How to Make Your Garden Into an Artistic MASTERPIECE
by
Adele Kurtz
5 Materials
175 Months
Advanced
Here are a dozen examples to inspire you to get creative with found objects and think artistically as you work with your landscape.
Enjoy highlights from my garden and check out my other posts for more inspiration!
Here's the first installment in this series:
http://www.hometalk.com/diy/outdoor/garden/art-rockin-the-garden-28702161
Entry to my SCULPTURE GARDEN
Here's what you may first see when you come to visit our property.
I fantasized about creating a Sculpture Garden made out of rocks and other found natural objects mixed with wildflowers and plantings all set around a pond with waterfalls, attracting wildlife and stimulating the senses.
Here are some of the creatures that developed from this fantasy.
1. Equinimity. The first piece I commissioned from a drawing I did. I traded one of my paintings with a metalworker for this piece cut out of metal-plate with glass insets for the eyes. I bent metal sucker rods -- the same ones I experimented with when I rebuilt my deck
http://www.hometalk.com/diy/build/decks/woe-to-wow-smart-deck-transformation-22396521
I set off the sculpture with this rustic fringe plus kindred rocks and collected pieces. This was the first step in my journey about 13 years ago.
2. Remembering the Fires. Rich and I collect driftwood as well as rocks and whatevers on our many local nature hikes and trips to distant lands. There was a major fire near us at Vallecito Reservoir many years ago that I photographed and painted. I wanted a sculptural remembrance outside, too.
This burnt out log from the fire serves as a totem now to remind me of the beauty of natural destruction. It's companion driftwood is it's anchor. The chain offers you admittance or barrier -- your choice, your perception.
3a. Bachelor City This is my latest creation. I have become freer and wilder in my selections and how I present them. I picked up rusted pieces laying on the ground near an old abandoned mining camp where young men were drawn, over 100 years ago, to try to stake their claims and live together for protection, food and amusement.
3b. Other views of Bachelor City. Along our hikes we picked up old bottles and rusty squashed cans to lay at the feet of BC. Remembrances of long ago days spent in the mines, and nights spent around campfires and in tents.
The wildness of the roots reminds me of the fires, the spirits of the miners and the night.
4. A whimsical happenstance when collecting and stacking rocks...
"Hey reminds me of a boy and his dog playing at the edge of the woods."
A few tweaks developed the semblance into a more permanent installation. When you have your balancing right, it doesn't fall down any more.
5. Canon Beach Wedding Totem
Another bold statement as a souvenir from our son's wedding. We left the celebration to stroll around and found this old log obstruction. Rescued it, drove it home 1,400 miles, between our seats, exactly the depth of our station wagon. Now it stands nearly 8' tall bleached out and proud amid a carefully selected & placed group of rocks.
6. As you head toward the ponds in our gardens, you will see groupings of rocks and plantings. I have grown to appreciate grouping my objects by defining the space. Each group is it's own still life creation. Edges are defined by cutting at least 2" deep, lining underneath with newspaper and filling in with plantings and red rock.
7. Our property in an official Wildlife Refuge. Please see our post on how to qualify
http://www.hometalk.com/diy/outdoor/garden/does-your-garden-qualify-for-national-wildlife-certification-5-steps--21135256
It has become a sanctuary for birds, deer, bears and more. This is a stacked grouping left wild for now. A work in process being enjoyed by a robin.
8. An artist plays with color, texture, and form working on the garden as your ever-changing, expanding canvas.
9. Thinking like an artist means paying attention to positive and negative space. Holes and texture. Rhythm and Motion. Repetitive Shapes and Contrasting Colors.
I know a lot of Hometalkers are artists. I switched from static 2-D painting and photography to 3-D evolutionary installations where I expanded my focus to earthworks like these.
10. My choice of flow is constantly ebbing with circular waves of motion and direction. Each piece points to the next place to follow.
11. Edges are never constant -- they lead you somewhere ... onto the next place.
12. This is a WORK IN PROCESS Garden. I have cut down the edges to define this amoeba-like shape which developed simply because there were an over-abundance of native and volunteer seedlings already competing with the grasses. So I pulled most of the grasses, laid swaths of mulch and red rock. Arranged some driftwood... and we'll see how it wants to develop. Where Nature finishes, there Woman begins! (DaVinci adaptation)
13. These shots are from mid June. Soon this ground will be ablaze with an explosion of July and August wildflowers.
For my next garden post -- if I see interest -- I'll show you a Wildflower Works... Inspired from my association with artist Chapman Kelly, a friend who created (in)famous ellipses at Grant Park in Chicago.
Comments
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3 of 7 comments
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Very inspiring. We just bought a rustic place by the river. So I've been thinking what I want to do with some of the areas and this gives me some great ideas!
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Loved your pics and inspired to repurpose even more now. I live on a creek and when the water rises with occasional floods, I am left with clean up of some pretty cool stuff to use that belonged to some body way up creek. If they don’t come looking for it and sadly, they never do, I use it somewhere. I hate the landfills, and I have acreage, so it’s put to use somewhere. Again, thank you for inspiration 👍🏼
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