Fractals in the Garden

[the leaf]


[the Mandelbrot set]


Given the amount of time that I must currently spend in the lab, (and I do in fact write this from beside the RF-magnetron sputter coater) it is perhaps not surprising that my garden-thinking is addled with science, and turning at present to fractals.

The fractal is an astonishingly efficient way to build space. You only need one equation, which can be thought of as one geometric shape, or in the physical realm one mechanism, to make something at increasingly larger and larger scales.

Fractals are called 'self-similar' or 'recursive', because of this quality. In the growth of a tree, branches form on branches form on branches, from twigs to trunk. The individual leaflets of a fern are nearly identical to the whole frond.

If you google 'fractals', you'll get alot of computer-generated art, but I don't have much patience with it, preferring to appreciate naturally occuring fractals instead.

So what does this mean to the garden? It's thought that we have a natural affinity for the self-similar; that our native conception of beauty is tied to this idea of observation at all scales.

This is perhaps why the cottage garden, with a plethora of detail at the scale of a flower blossom, needs its topiary. The topiary provides something for the eye at the big end of the scale. And why minimalist gardens can be oddly disappointing to experience. Their smooth surfaces and sleek constructions can leave a blank at the 'small' end of the scale; when you come close there is no longer anything to see.

I'm thinking of my garden as a fractal today.

Love to all from the lab.

[The cyclamen-leaf-I-wish-I'd-found and other photos are from the blog orso]

More Outsider Art in the Garden: Roadside Grottoes

Rustic, do-it-yourself garden endeavors, by untrained artists at Pluto-like distances from any traditional art milieu, seem much more common here in the United States than in Europe. I would like to draw a high-flown parallel between such constructs and the utopian ideals of the Founders as well as the recurring theme in American history of a better, self-determined life just across the new frontier, but it has been a weary week in the lab and you can likely make such connections yourselves.

At any rate, the lack of zoning regulations might have been more of a factor.

And the availability of concrete, coupled with the new phenomenon of families on short trips seeing the USA in their Chevrolet, as pointed out by the Minnesota Museum of the Mississippi.

"..farm-bred do-it-yourself confidence and readily available portland cement allowed even solitary individuals to build monumental public spaces and make a name for themselves..."

Many of them did so in the garden (better to be viewed directly from the road) or, in American terms, the 'yard', where grotto caves began to sprout strangely from the plains.

Above from top to bottom:

the Christiansen Rock garden in Albert Lea, MN, c. 1925 (still extant but private)

Father Mathias Wernerus building the Dickeyville grotto, Dickeyville, WI, where he set everything from petrified wood to decorative china and perfume bottle stoppers into a Catholic shrine from 1925-1930 (still open to visitors)

and my personal favorite, the 'Lover's Heart' still available for photo ops (feathered cap optional)at Rockome in Arcola, IL.

All photos from the Minnesota Museum of the Mississippi. See much, much more in their 'Garden Delights' section, and at detour art travels.

On a personal note, in a creek-bed near my home I've recently discovered a small column of roughly mortared rocks and shells, in the same style as these roadside constructs, dumped there along with other bits of concrete by some unsensitive soul. It will soon have pride of place in my own garden.

Outsider Art in the Garden: the sculptures of William Edmondson

While recently in Nashville I got to see an exhibition of sculpture by William Edmondson, the first African American to have a one-man show at MOMA, in 1937. Most were carved in an outdoor setting, and clearly intended for display there; they seemed ill at ease in the luxurious gallery where they now reside. Edmondson (1874-1951) was the child of freed slaves (his last name is the name of the farm just outside of Nashville to which he 'belonged'), and he called his sculptures miracles.

He carved them in his front yard and sold them for a few dollars along with vegetables at his roadside stand. Now they sell for six figures.

"His entire yard was filled with animals and human figures carved directly out of limestone blocks. His style was and is distinctive. In his own words, he carved "stingily," barely liberating the living creatures he saw in the stone from its confines. His human figures are voluptuously rounded, his animals sturdy. Whether human or animal, each is endowed with expressive facial features and other intricate detailing. At once primitive and sophisticated, his work straddles the folk art and modern art worlds. "

"The fleeting recognition during his lifetime never affected Edmondson’s own assessment of his art. "I was just doing the Lord’s work," he said in one interview. "I didn’t know I was no artist until them folks come and told me I was." Indeed, in every existing interview with Edmondson, he consistently credited God when asked about his work and never referred to himself as an artist."

A friend once said to me that some people think they're artists and they're not; and some people think they're not artists when they really are.

I've always remembered that.

[source of quotations is this excellent article on Edmondson]