Wednesday, September 16, 2009
water & art
Reading round these pieces on water and art and (intentionally) flooded places, ice fishing and lost memories, I've returned to Basia Irland's hydrologic cycles, the fog, the dew, the iceberg, steam, and find myself considering the beauty of light and vapor as well as the beauty in fire and darkness. Is it a matter of perspective and time, of the near and the far, today or tomorrow that corrupts edenic desires to make life in a garden? Or is it just our nature to push and shove geology, hydrology, vegetation--is there any beauty in that process? What sort of garden are we making? Irland's emphasis on the ephemerality of slow, often unseen, processes in nature echoes the non-manifesto of slow food. Life as art in a water garden....
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Jack,
ReplyDeleteIndeed, what sort of garden? How much of our gardening is functionality, how much aesthetic judgement? Can the ecological patterns erase us, or have we generated so much interference that we are changing them? I think the answer, to some degree is scale. Scale of technology, scale of interference. We make these gestures which are fine at a scale of our hands, or even of hand held tools, but then at the scale of cultivating 16 rows in one pass with a John Deere, the relationships break down and eden is no more. Perspective, indeed, but a specific perspective, that teaches us that economies of scale are required, that cheaper is better...
Thank you!
Catherine