Visitors of all ages experienced Wave Hill’s landscape through drawing at the Drawn to Nature Target Free weekend, April 6 and 7, 2013. Family Art Project guest artist Ander Mikalson created a line of drawings on the lower lawn. Exhibiting artists from Drawn to Nature, the exhibition on view in Glyndor Gallery, assisted visitors in a collaborative project. Participants were invited to share their creations through a flickr page set up for this purpose. Check them out!

Last Sunday, conceptual landscape artist Matthew Jensen gave an engaging artist talk in the Sunroom Project Space about his project East Coast, West Coast, The Bronx, The Bronx.  The audience was delighted to hear him discuss the themes and sources for his work.  

We were pleased to see Raymond E. Mingst and Arthur Bruso, the directors of Curious Matter, a contemporary art gallery in Jersey City, which showed Jensen’s work last year.  It was a treat to see that they had posted this wonderful write-up on their blog yesterday.

Since 2007, the Sunroom Project Space has provided an opportunity for New York City-area emerging artists to exhibit a site-specific solo show. Five to seven installations are mounted from April through November each year.

Last week, we were pleased to welcome the dedicated Sleepy Hollow Manor Garden Club, just up the Hudson from Wave Hill. In working out the details for their visit, I expected their time here to be positive―and the weather was certainly glorious! It was an added bonus to receive from the manager of The Shop at Wave Hill, Jenah Barry, this kind note from a member of the club, who posted to her blog about the trip.

“Dear Jenah Barry,
Our garden club had a lovely visit to Wave Hill yesterday and I am really looking forward to planting the seeds I purchased in your beautiful shop.
I did a write a post about our visit for my blog and I am attaching a link here.
Hope you enjoy!
Cordially,
Dorothy Handelman”

Yes, Dorothy, we certain did enjoy it. Visit again soon!

It was great to have Visiting Artist Ander Mikalson working with us on our installation for Drawn to Nature Weekend. Called Drawing a Line through Wave Hill, this project was a fantastic chance for collaborative artwork! We began in the Ecology Building, where families were greeted warmly by our storyteller extraordinaire, Rama Mandal, pictured here. Rama helped get families inspired to draw with these four stories: The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, Andrew Drew and Drew by Barney Saltzberg and Vincent’s Colors, a book produced by the Metropolitan Museum. Each story encompassed ideas of creativity and inspiration and each captured the adventure of drawing. And adventurous the project was!

The first stage was drawing. We created images by drawing on watercolor paper with white and yellow crayons, and then dipping the paper into watercolor paint.  Initially, there wasn’t much to see, but dipping into the paints was like magic: the watercolor paint adhered to the paper, but only around our crayon drawings. This technique, called resist, was something we learned from Ander. We also drew on transparency paper with oil pastels.

The drawings were brought out to the roof of the Ecology building and the Lower Lawn, where we created an installation. This was the best part. Drawings were tied to sticks collected from around Wave Hill, and then placed in the ground. As the weekend went on, our line grew and grew, just as Andrew drew and drew in our story!

With over 200 contributions, our line of drawing worked its way up the hill. Many visitors stopped to photograph it, kids made a game out of running along or hopping over it and we even taught some families who were photographing their drawings how to get down in front of them and capture the ground and the sky through their transparencies. With the colors of nature as our base, and the ability to see right through some of the drawings as they swayed in the breeze and became part of the landscape, families were certainly“drawn to nature.

New York City-based artist Ander Mikalson works with elements of performance, sound, sculpture, time and drawing. She received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BA from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Most recently, she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been shown in Sweden, Ecuador, Austria and throughout the United States.

Visiting Artist Moses Ros, a Bronx-based visual artist working in painting, mural, printmaking, sculpture and video, joined us in welcoming the new season with Up Pops Spring, a project inspired by his current printmaking. He creates stamps by making wood carvings, and then uses block-printing ink and an ink roller to ink the stamp and create a printed image on recycled materials, such as cereal or pizza boxes. He prints on the decorated side of the box, then cuts out the image and re-positions it on another area of the recycled material to create layers. He also uses the prints to create mobiles with fishing wire and straws for his structure.

Family Art Project families were able to create their own nature-inspired designs, with a little tweaking: instead of wood blocks we used recycled styrofoam trays, and instead of wood-block carving tools we used pencils to carve into the styrofoam trays. For the mobiles, we used string and twigs to replace plastic straws and wire. (Thanks to all the wonderful families who visit regularly and to our own staff, we had a collection of recycled boxes with all kinds of designs the families could choose from.)

One family sat together, but each seemed focused on his or her own design. But in the end they combined their efforts to create one great family mobile they planned to hang in their yard at home.

A father/daughter duo created a 3-dimensional castle from the recycled boxes, decorated with prints and styrofoam reliefs. The project started with heart-shape prints on a heart-shaped box; as they worked, they took inspiration from Moses’ materials and examples and spread their creative wings. There were nature prints in shapes of flowers, hand prints and creatures of all sorts, even a dinosaur!

Families were inspired to work together and really collaborate on their creations in this project—even small siblings like this industrious duo!

Up Pops Spring with Moses Ros was a great way to welcome the season!

Moses’ work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Hostos Center of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Yeshiva University Museum, Paterson Museum and Museo de Arte Moderno.

Wonderfully suited to the glorious magnolia blossoms in the gardens now, The Shop is offering a new collection  of beautifully packaged magnolia-scented bath and body products—and home décor with a magnolia theme—by Michel Design Works. These include luxurious bubble bath, soaps, lotions, guest towels, soy wax candles and pretty boxes of matches. All beauty products include moisturizing shea butter, jojoba oils and extracts from nature. Think green tea, lavender essential oils, seaweed extracts.

Keep them in mind for Mother’s Day May 12, but don’t wait to make your selection.  You know she deserves something perfectly practical and charming for pampering after the long winter season.

The magnolia pictured above offers glorious pops of color up beyond the Perkins Visitor Center—also, of course, the home of The Shop. With Arbor Week starting this weekend, April 20, I plan to make time for a walk through the flowering gardens myself.

It’s the first week of April and spring is finally settling over Wave after a cold and blustery March. The gardeners are busy pruning, mulching, planting and generally sprucing up the grounds, happy to be out in the garden putting their seasonal plans into motion.

This week, the gardeners also welcomed our new Nally Interns. Here, gardener Syretha Brooks and intern Guilherme Goncalves are mulching the beds in front of Glyndor Gallery.

Gardener Will Wallace working in the Flower Garden. The blue flower is Chionodoxa sardensis, or glory-of-the-snow, which blankets Wave Hill every April.

At right, Director of Horticulture Scott Canning is out in the garden, pruning shrubs at the Perkins Visitor Center.

Some big jobs require big equipment. Arborists from Almstead Tree and Shrub Care pruned the large evergreens in front of Glyndor Gallery this week.

Above, gardener Susannah Strazzera sowing seeds in the Potting Shed. Once germinated, the seedlings are transplanted into flats, and spend some time beefing up in the “Three House”, one of our behind-the-scenes growing areas, pictured below.

An unwelcome guest in the Three House—this sneaky mockingbird has a penchant for flinging fragile seedlings from their pots.

Who’s this on the Great Lawn?

Turns out this pesky critter was a fleeting April Fool’s “installation” by one of our cheeky gardeners!

My first word as a baby was “flower” and I spent many happy days as a child working with my mother in her beautiful garden. As an artist, nature has always been an inspiration and I’m delighted to work in this beautiful corner of New York City.

I am enchanted by the seasons, most of all by the emergence of fresh green leaves and buds in the spring, evidence of growth and renewal! Every day there is something at Wave Hill that surprises and delights me. Today I found these beautiful narcissus blooming in the Marco Polo Stufano Conservatory. The hellebores are out and the tulips are beginning to wake from their long winter sleep in the Paisley Bed just beyond the doors to The Shop.

In The Shop, our seeds have arrived! Look out for the shipment from Hudson Valley Seed Library, a small, independent, local farm that produces resilient, heirloom seeds, organically grown and beautifully packaged in unique packets designed by contemporary artists.  

As Lois Elhert writes in her beautiful children’s book Planting a Rainbow:  We wait “for spring to warm the soil and sprout the bulbs… We sow the seeds and set out the plants in the soil and watch the rainbow grow, and grow and grow.”

While waiting for longer, warmer days and April’s showers I have been enjoying our Kobo seed candles, pure soy, fragranced candles made by hand in New York State. They are packaged in a seed-paper box; when planted in the soil and watered, the box will grow the plant that fragrances the candle. Choose among tomato, sunflower, poppy or thyme. I also love Under The Nile’s wonderful, organic cotton fruit and veggie toys, child’s play that is perfect until it’s warm enough for the kids to enjoy the gardens outside.

We are busy preparing for a busy season with the official opening of spring on March 20. I look forward to meeting you in The Shop!

I love observing the changes as one season pivots into the next, and late February is one of these special moments. Certainly, winter is not yet over, the snow has barely melted and there’s still ice on the Aquatic Garden pond some mornings, but there are plenty small signs that spring is already starting—if you know where to look.

In the Alpine House, tiny fritillaries (like the Fritillaria stenanthera pictured above) and mounded wood-sorrels (Oxalis spp.,pictured at right) bloom happily on sunny days and the many tiny flowers of the Bolivian nasturtium (Tropaeolum tricolor) and its Chilean cousin (Tropaeolum hookerianum) will soon be on display.

Outside, snowdrops, crocuses and winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) pattern the Wild Garden with white, mauve and shades of yellow. Snowdrops (Galanthus spp.) pose prettily on the left, Crocus tommasinianus on the right.

Below, Crocus ancyrensis ‘Golden Bunch’, on the left,  makes for a charming contrast with Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), on the left.

Some trees also flower at this very early time. Witch-hazel (Hamamelis) ‘Orange Beauty’ has been true to its name for several weeks and ‘Arnold Promise’ is just beginning to show up bright yellow between the Parking Lot and the Entrance Lawn. Shown here is Hamamelis ×intermedia ‘Orange Beauty’, followed by Hamamelis ×intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’.

Nearby is the closely related Persian ironwood (Parrotia persica, below).  It is to the left of the pedestrian path, just as you enter onto the Entrance Lawn. Closely examine the numerous plump buds that are scattered throughout this tree and you will be surprised to discover that they coddle clusters of bright crimson flowers.

Over the next few weeks many more crocuses will emerge as will the buttercup-yellow adonis plants in both the Wild Garden and Shade Border but perhaps most anticipated of all is the glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa sardensis) that will cover large swaths of Wave Hill with a blue carpet in March and early April:

A lot can happen in a week, in fact there are new surprises every day. Perhaps the best way to keep up is to just stand still and watch.

In mid-February, during Open Studios for Winter Workspace 2013, visitors to Glyndor Gallery viewed the work of six artists—some of the work finished, some ongoing and some just commenced— who have spent the past six weeks transforming the gallery into studio spaces. The artists—Manuel Acevedo, Zachary Fabri, Asuka Hishiki, Maria Hupfield, Paloma McGregor and Linda Stillman—were present to explain the projects they have been developing at Wave Hill. Visually, the work on view in the studios varied enormously, from Maria’s felt suit to Manuel’s photographic alphabet to Paloma’s sculptural stage set for a dance piece. All of the projects, however, have their roots in the unique natural environment of Wave Hill. Prior to the Open Studios, I had been able to observe the varying ways the artists drew inspiration from the gardens during the occasional visit to their studios, and even better, while strolling around the grounds with them.

The artists, like many of us this time of year, gravitated to the Marco Polo Stufano Conservatory as a welcome burst of green in the gray of winter. I joined Linda Stillman on her daily visit to the conservatory. During her time at Wave Hill, she developed a sort of collaboration with gardener Jennifer Shovlin. Every day Jen left a flower pot nestled inconspicuously in the Tropical House. It contained petals that had fallen or been clipped from plants in the Conservatory. Linda took what is for the gardener detritus and returned with it to her studio, picking up some bright-orange flowers that had fallen from the Flame Vine (Pyrostegia Venusta) on her way. These fallen petals were on view during Open Studios, each flower’s pigment rubbed onto individual squares of watercolor paper.

Linda has been making these flower rubbings for a few years now, a practice that began as a way of preserving the flowers she grew in her own garden, but never before had she had access to the diversity of plants (and, therefore, colors) that she did at Wave Hill. Linda wasn’t expecting to be able to collect petals from the Conservatory , but once Jen started leaving her the pot of petals, Linda was so excited by the opportunity to experiment with this new material that she abandoned her plans to use store-bought flowers. Over the course of her six-week residency she compiled an entire wall filled with rubbings and flower pressings, ultimately forming a kind of diary of her daily visits to the Conservatory.

Linda wasn’t the only artist in the first session of Winter Workspace whose plans were disrupted by her experience of the gardens. Toward the end of the first session of Winter Workspace I stopped by Asuka Hishiki’s studio and was amazed to see an entire wall of her studio covered with butterflies.

Dozens of copies of a hand-drawn butterfly had been printed on vellum and pinned to a delicate, pencil drawing of a tree, appearing almost like leaves or flowers. I was amazed by this piece, tentatively titled Butterfly Tree, not only because of its beauty but also because it was so unexpected. In the past, Asuka has usually made small watercolor paintings in the style of a botanical illustrator, mostly depicting vegetables and insects.  The scale, use of collage and subject matter in Butterfly Tree was such a departure from Asuka’s previous artwork that I had to learn what had prompted her to make it.

Walking through the grounds with her the next day, I asked Asuka about Butterfly Tree. She explained that she had always kept the idea of the collage in the back of her mind as a project she would one day work on. She wasn’t planning on making it during her time at Wave Hill until, on a walk through the gardens, she found the Saucer Magnolia tree (Magnolia x soulangiana) and felt that she should draw it. This drawing ended up being so successful that she went full-steam ahead and worked with a printer to make the butterflies, which she individually hand-cut and then attached to the tree drawing using insect pins. The completed piece made a big impact during Open Studios, though I learned while talking with Asuka that the gardens had affected her work in more subtle ways, too.

Like Linda, Asuka spent much of her time during Winter Workspace in the Conservatory. Also like Linda, Asuka found a way to document these visits. Each day, she picked a small section of a plant, perhaps a recently bloomed cactus flower or an orchid that had opened up its petals, and made a small drawing, using her skill as a botanical illustrator. While she had already mastered watercolor technique, she had to invent a different process for making these daily drawings. This is because she is used to drawing from life—having the plant she is drawing right in front of her—and in the Conservatory  there wasn’t enough room for her to set up her materials. Instead, she relied on photography, often revisiting her subject matter throughout the day to make sure the camera had correctly captured the color. In order to complete a drawing each day, Asuka had to work much more quickly. In the past, she spent months, even years, working on a single drawing.

Asuka, Linda and everyone else in the first session of Winter Workspace left with a body of work impacted by Wave Hill. The artists participating in the second session of the residency have begun to arrive, settling into their studios and, more importantly, familiarizing themselves with the grounds. Already we are eager for the next Open Studios day, when new interpretations of our landscape will certainly be on view.