Getting Lost

I’ve been reading Rebecca Solnit’s new book. One reviewer wrote that when reading this, at times the reader gets lost in ways that Solnit never intended. Well, I like the quote Solnit uses from Daniel Boone. When asked if he had ever been lost, he answered, No, but I was confused once for three days.

Memphis, Cezanne's Garden, and Rerevival

I went to Memphis for our traditional Thanksgiving Holiday gathering, and got back late last night. I had a flight layover in St. Louis this time, and lingered there for awhile. While there, I read Architectural Digest, which I savor, and came upon this article about "Cezanne's garden." Actually the article is called, "Cezanne's Vision." There are pictures of the plantings of ivy, fig, and rosemary that "encroach" upon the entrance of what was Cezanne's studio. He preferred, the article says, "a labor-saving garden filled with more permanent elements of nature that he encountered during his walks around his cherished mountain - woody plants such as juniper and linden and fragrant herbs such as rosemary and thyme - along with limestone blocks that serve as pedestals...." "Art must make nature eternal in our imagination," he is said to have said.

The curator of the place now says that the garden today is an interpretation of Cezanne's garden philosophy rather than a strict interpretation.

His garden is a tapestry of greens.

I read this as I sat in the hustle and bustle of late-night Thanksgiving holiday finish, in the airport in St. Louis; although this holiday hustle-and-bustle was really quite calm, relatively speaking, compared to other holidays. I think people are spreading out the holidays, because of the experience of hustle and bustle in the past.

Reading and savoring the pictures and thoughts of Cezanne and his gardens - what a rough exterior can reveal as we think further to experience the internal - is wonderful, and all the more so as I sit here, in this highly charged atmosphere of neon, slick surfaces, and loud noise. There is no real sense of quiet contemplation and the savoring of greens.

I am all the more moved by this slick experience, on the page, of opulence, the fabric and texture of works of art, as creators create with absolute intention, to create a whole - in a house, an estate, an experience. Each thought and creation can be a work of art, all the more, with absolute intention and the joy of creating. The joy of creating with absolute intention.

Visit Rerevival, where the seahorses image lives.

This blog is a way for me to indulge my experience of Art. :) On Sunday afternoon, I visited Brookgreen Gardens, the sculpture garden just south of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina which was created by Archer and Anna Huntington. I have a lot to say about how much I enjoyed my visit there. Here is a beginning thought, from the book I bought about the couple:
"Anna was discovering that puppies and sculpture do not mix." The "remarkable Huntingtons" are indeed a study within themselves, of the art of creation, and how they created together. Here is another: "When elated and feeling his oats, Archer's knee-jerk reaction was to found a museum or plan a trip."
www.brookgreen.org

Take a trip, if only virtual, for now. This creation is a tribute to the art of nature, and the nature of art.