Keep Out!

The more I explore the garden at 104th St. and the community gardens I pass while I walk around the city, I can't help but notice the use of wire fencing around their perimeters and how unwelcoming they are. It may just be a cultural thing - decorative, albeit mock-Victorian, wrought iron fences are favored more than wire fencing common for industrial use in England. Throughout America, thousands of miles of wire fencing is used to line baseball sports fields, school grounds, parking lots and prison yards. While decorative wrought iron bars mask windows and doors in urban neighbourhoods - I look down at 104th St. Garden in my apartment through such a myriad of iron.

There is no detaching such an image with ideas of security: does the threat of danger lie behind the fence or is the fence keeping the threat out?

West 104th Street Garden

A Lot Of Possibilities

Host presents, A Lot Of Possibilities, the first show at Winter Space. Based around a formerly abandoned private garden lot that was taken over and then neglected by the City, it was the initiative from the locals to turn the space into a garden and create a common interest within the community. The exhibition explores the idea and experience of transformation and transplantation through various interior 'lots' from participating artists: Nanna Debois Buhl, Laura Fayer, Sandra Eula Lee, Sandra Mack-Valencia, Kenneth Rasmussen, Mark Inglis Taylor and Jonathan Velardi.

A Lot Of Possibilities opens February 7th and on Open Weekends thereafter from February 7th to March 29th, 11am-4pm. By appointment only on 917-549-7285

New Year New York

I am in New York for a month working on a project with the artist collective Host. I will be researching the work of Patricia Johanson from 1969 when she was asked to create a proposal from the editors of House & Garden, to produce landscape designs for a garden for the magazine. 146 drawings were produced and dealt with metaphysical relationships between nature and humans. I will propose a landscape design for the community garden, 104 St. Garden, that sits in between Central Park West and Manhattan Avenue in the Upper East Side. While living in the neighborhood I will be sourcing inspiration from this area, known as Manhattan Valley, with the views from local residents as well as my own transplantation into the community from England that will lend itself to ideas of a 'British Garden'.

I will continue to document my research and the work produced up to the exhibition opening on February 7th.

Happy New Year

So I haven't posted for a while but 2009 is a new beginning in so many ways, and I thought I'd start with a recommendation. Windsor Castle has been the source of a mountain of inspiration - it is the world's oldest and largest working castle and houses England's finest examples of Baroque style in the State Apartments, thanks to King George IV. Over its 1000-year history a story lies behind every door, painting and clock ranging from Edwardian to Victorian, to 21-st Century eras. The castle is an incredible place in itself, but walks throughout Windsor Great Park are equally breathtaking. Only 20 miles away from London it is my first 'must-do' for 2009.

Happy New Year!