What's Inside Your Head?

The other day I had the honor of judging the art work of students from the Manchester, New Hampshire area. My local art association offers a scholarship each year to the student we deem the most talented, who plans to go to college with a major in the fine arts. I was blown away by this year's winner. Her use of color, composition, and medium were superb, but all of the judges agreed that what put her over the top was her subject matter. She has the ability to take a central idea, manipulate it, and let her imagination run wild to realize a fully developed story in a single image in every single one of her paintings. She got me thinking about fully realized creativity...

I am fascinated by human creativity. Whether the outlet for our creative efforts is the fine arts, gardening, dramatic arts, music, or writing, human expression is a wonder. How amazing it is to me that we can take what is in our heads, use an appropriate medium to get it out, and allow others to see our thoughts. Effective communication can help others see things in a new light. Our creative efforts can even make people feel our emotions.

One student showed a picture of her version of heaven. The painting was done in all golds. We saw the back of a girl's head, looking over a stone fence at an expansive castle-like building. This image was done for a class assignment. The object was to paint something that could not be expressed with words. From the painting I garnered a feeling of wonder and beauty before the artist identified the subject. Very effectively, she communicated her vision of something larger than herself, something that brings her peace and happiness. Immediately, I felt her emotions when looking at her painting.

In my garden photography, I aim to point out the beauty and wonder I feel while in a garden. There is no place I feel more at peace with myself and my place in the universe. My husband (who is not a gardener) once told me that I make flowers more beautiful than they really are. I don't think that is true because I see the beauty that is in my photographs when I look at flowers, but I'm glad he feels that way. I know that he looks at flowers twice now because he sees something that he didn't notice before I took up garden photography. I have helped make my vision his. I have helped him feel my sense of wonder and my happiness in the garden.

Though I am usually showing a beauty that is there, sometimes in my imagery I try to show things that are not there. One of my favorite things is to visit a field of flowers and imagine a newly formed landscape. It is a form of meditation for me I suppose. I'll sandwich fields of photos together to show my alternate vision of the landscape. The images that begin this post show samples of this type of work and creativity.

While choosing the landscape and appropriate planting for my own garden, I am out to accomplish the same thing. I have a vision of my yard. In my mind's eye, I know what the finished product of my gardening efforts will be. One day, I will realize the vision and finally get it out of my head for all to see the true potential of my landscape and the comfort I gain from it. And with this realized final product one will also be able to see a part of me, melded with with nature, at its my most peaceful self. This is what I have deemed "The Gardener's Soul." It is the creativity inside a person or a person's inner self achieving a melding with the world around her and expressing itself in the garden.

The Creative Spirit

The garden has a way of unleashing one's creative spirit. According to the Mirriam Webster dictionary, to create is to make or bring into existence something new. The creative spirit is that part of you that comes up with new ideas. You then apply these ideas toward creating something. We create things all day long - reports, dinner, a clean house - but the creative spirit goes beyond the mundane. When we use our creative side, we tap into an inner power that allows us to make something extraordinary.

When I think of the creative spirit, I think of the part of myself that sees things with fresh eyes. This side of me is not something that I can access easily all of the time. Have you ever sat down to write and couldn't think of an idea? Do you serve the same foods over and over again at every Thanksgiving meal? Have you ever had free time and just ended up running your chore list for the week? This is not your creative spirit at work. You creative spirit helps you to think outside of a box, to do different things, to DARE to do different things. For example, you open a dictionary, point to a word and decide to write about it. (I didn't do this today by the way.)
To get rid of writer's block we have exercises to get the creative juices flowing. We have recipe books to help us rethink our meal planning. We have books and magazines to help us plan our free time and get moving in a new direction.

For me, and I suspect for most other gardeners, stepping out into the garden achieves the same effect. Last year, after a weary winter of freezing and thawing then flooding here in NH, I stepped out in April to visit the trees I have pictured above. They are located only a few miles from my house, on a hill in an office park. I've passed them on the highway many times. Actually, I shouldn't say that I "stepped" out because I remember dragging myself out. I felt low and told myself that perhaps if I got moving I could change things around. As I approached the beautiful pink blooms, I parked the car. It was a Sunday and the only people around were the landscape crew. the only noise was their lawn mowers. I stepped up to the tree and snapped a picture. "Okay, this isn't so bad," I remember thinking.

Three trees in a row and how best to capture them? I only work with two lenses, which is sometimes a detriment. Usually those two serve me well because they are meant for small closeup flower work or portraits, the primary photos I take. But shooting trees is difficult. I wanted to photograph the way my eyes saw the scene and that was not really possible for me with my fixed macro lens or my other lens (which I think is 50-120 for anyone who cares, but don't hold me to that. I'm sitting in a car dealership and can't check. I also have so many numbers in my head that I have difficulty remembering things like lens length.) I wanted a wider panorama. Anyway, I did my best. The creative juices began to flow. I walked around the trees and under the trees. I probably would have climbed them if I had been able, but the landscape crew might have looked at me funny if I had done that anyway.

I went home feeling not totally satisfied that I had achieved greatness, but the blahs were leaving me. Later, I got on the computer to see the digital files I had shot. Then it hit me. I wanted to highlight the contrasts of the road, sky, grass and blossoms. I boosted the intensity of the colors and darkened the road. I wanted more texture to shake off the flat whiteness of winter. I added some boxes of texture. I wanted to shout "Spring!" And I think I did with this picture. I created something extraordinary. No, it's not extraordinary in a prize winning photo sort of way, but I expressed myself. I let the voice deep inside of me shout out. I brought something mundane outside of the box. It made me feel more alive and content.

So, this is the creative spirit. Whether it involves creating a piece of art, helping your orchids grow, or playing with your child on the playground. It is the part of you that speaks up and allows you to do something out of the ordinary. It allows you to see the world around you from a different dimension than where you started. with any luck, your vision will help others change a little too.

This year I hope to photograph the apple trees a few towns away while they are in bloom.

The Art of Gardening

Gardening means "to cultivate a plot of land." And in the case of my perennial garden, which takes up most of my gardening effort, I would like to refine the definition to say: "To cultivate a plot of land for beauty and enjoyment."

Art means " The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty."

Do you think that perennial gardening is an art? I certainly do. Gardening is a creative means of self-expression. The type of garden you create makes a statement about who you are and what you enjoy. Your garden provides visual stimulation with its colors and forms. It can also provide aural and scent stimulation. The multi-sense experience available in the garden certainly affects one's "sense of beauty."

Every year around this time, museums all over the country host "Art in Bloom" events. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts event will take place April 26-29. If you have never had the pleasure of viewing an "Art in Bloom" exhibit, I encourage you to attend one. Flower arrangers are invited into fine art museums to choose a painting and base an arrangement on the artwork. The flower arrangement is then set alongside for visitors to enjoy. Obviously, the arrangements only last a short time. The arrangement mimics the original artists sensibility, but the ability to duplicate the original emotional expression of the fine artist is an art in itself. Not everyone can create such beautiful arrangements. For the arranger to be able to apply this skill to interpreting what the original artist had to say is miraculous to me.

Locally, in my area, I read that a gentleman recently wrote a book about gardens inspired by art. Unfortunately I misplaced the ad for the talk he is going to give at a local museum and I am unable to find reference to it online. But I am intrigued by the idea of this book. Imagine creating a whole garden to mimic one of the great fine artists. You could create the obvious gardens in Monet's work, based on his own personal gardens in Giverny. (Monet was actually an avid gardener who saw his own gardens as works of art and used them to inspire his paintings.) You can create fields of iris inspired by Van Gogh's iris. Or you can reach beyond flowers and just be inspired by vivid colors in pictures to create your own interpretations. Maybe Degas' dancers put you in the mood for tiny pink blossoms? This kind of gardening would be "Art in Bloom" on a grand scale!

I have never tried to create a garden based on the artists. Perhaps that can be a side project this year? What I do consciously accomplish in my own garden is a harmony of colors. My front garden is made up of primarily oranges and yellows. Purples overlap with yellow early in the season, creating a contrast of opposite colors on the color wheel. In my backyard garden I focus on pinks and purples with splashes of other colors. This color harmony stimulates me. I feel calm when I look at a garden with flowing waves of color. I like my two dimensional art work very much the same way. I also appreciate tight compositions that allow the eye to flow from one element to another.

For those of you who have never thought of yourselves as artists, try thinking about your garden in this way. What patterns do you see? What colors attract you? What elements do you appreciate in a garden? How do you decide where to place things? Then, take a look at a history of art book. (I recommend H.W. Jansen's History of Art if you can get your hands on a copy of his book. He provides a diverse range of works to get you fully acquainted with the art world through time.) Determine what attracts you to certain pictures. Are they the same elements that attract you to a particular gardening style?

What is Good Art?

They say art is subjective. I believe that to a large degree, but there are other elements that must be considered when judging art.

Telling good art from the bad art is a matter of

1. understanding an artist’s technique, medium, and competition enough to decide if he has created something that others have not created in the past and/or others would have trouble duplicating.

2. recognizing that the artist makes use of basic tenets of his medium, using compositional theories, lighting techniques, and effects to enhance his final product

3. seeing that the artist has expressed a unique personal vision. The artist has shown us a perspective of the world that includes his view of beauty or the lack of it.

4. Acknowledging whether or not the piece has a subject that affects us on an emotional level and the technique that the artist used makes us feel that emotion strongly.

I find that many who judge art on a professional level do not have all of these basics covered. This is especially true in the area of photography when an artists accustomed to looking at fine art paintings is asked to judge this very different medium. A judge who does not understand the medium must rely on elements 3-4, but will miss the preliminary two critical elements.

Case in point: A photographer stands in the woods and is lucky enough to view an unusual creature scurrying across the forest floor. The creature looks up and the photographer snaps the camera. She has been lucky enough to get a head on shot of the forest creature looking right at her. There are lots of shadows on the ground. The photographer didn't appropriately adjust white balance or meter so that the snow appears white and the shadows appear dark. Rather, the snow in the final photo appears gray. The creature was also moving so fast that he is just a tad out of focus. The image evokes good feelings. There are people who love this creature and would buy this picture to hang on their wall because it makes them feel good. Is this fine art or was this a lucky shot?

As a viewer who is not a judge, it is okay for you to judge a painting on levels 3 and 4. In fact, you should rely more heavily on these points because presumably, if you are trying to decide whether to buy a piece of artwork, you are planning to live with it for a long time in your home. You need to like it, whether or not it is good art in the higher sense. It is the professional or serious critic of art who needs to study and understand the history of art AND the particular art medium he is judging. In my mind, this makes art historians the most capable judges of multi-medium shows and not artists who have mastered a particular medium. (Unless, of course, they have gone out of their way to study the tenets of other mediums that they are judging.) Unfortunately, at art competitions, this is not always what the competing artist encounters.

Fine Art Photography and the Outdoor Art Exhibit

As the art show outdoor season gears up, I am deciding whether or not I want to sit it out. I've done local shows for the past two years and honestly have not had much success with them. Photography is a funny kind of art. Many people think that they can just pick up a camera and take their own "fine art" pictures because with a click of the camera anyone can have an image of some sort. They wonder why they should pay for someone else's images. "Why should I pay Melissa for a picture of a pansy when I can just go out and photograph the one in my garden?" In other words, many people see painting as a fine art, but don't see photography as such.

The favored "fine art" photographs in my area are images of the country lifestyle - wagons on a hill, barns, fences running through lupine meadows, ducks in a pond. If the location of the spot is identifiable, It makes the image all the more marketable. But do people consider these fine art? (Probably some and not all are deemed fine art by the purchaser. Other people I suspect buy these images because they give them prideful feelings about New England or evoke memories a a specific time in their lives unrelated to the artistic merit of the image itself.) These are not my kind of photos. I don't feel the warm fuzzies looking at rolling hills that lead to a horse in a pasture. I don't feel some sense of nostalgia looking at a picture of the statue of a mill girl with the local Manchester mill yard in the background. I feel as if I've seen them all before. But this is my bias, I suppose. With the risk of offending a few of my fellow photographers, these are the kinds of images that I picture on a postcard, not hanging on the wall of my home. Or, maybe I feel this way just because I know landscape photography is not one of my forte's?

What should a fine art photograph be? Most of the photos that grab me are not the ones I would hang on the walls of my home. I like provocative newsworthy photos. Dorothea Lange is a personal favorite. Her Depression era photographs of people with intense blank stares and hard lined faces capture me. The many textures captured in black and white are nothing short of beautiful fine art. The work of Alfred Stieglitz also captivates me. His great use of line and his ability to make an every day subject something to think about is poetic. Imogen Cunningham is my other favorite historical photographer. I relate best to her probably because she spent so many years in the domestic sphere, fighting to keep her art alive by taking photos of her surroundings. (She also has the fine distinction of producing art that I would hang on my walls.) No one can capture a flower or figure more sensually than she did, yet her news work was just as thought provoking as the rest of her colleagues when she was able to get out there and do it.

In my mind, a fine art photograph should have outstanding composition and should be thought provoking. If you look at my florals and have nothing to say about them, they are not for you. If you look at them and begin to discuss their vibrant color and composition then I've done my job. Better yet if you look at them and say, "I've never known that flower could be so beautiful," or "I've never noticed the detail on those tiny petals," I have made you think about nature. I have chosen the subject of florals because I have a lot to say about it. I just happen to be lucky that it looks good as a decorative object on a wall too.

An artist doesn't want you to take the world around you for granted. She wants you to see things you might not notice if she hasn't communicated it to you through a picture. The camera is just a tool to present a vision, just as a paintbrush is a tool. If you have something to say with a camera, go ahead and do it. There are a lot of talent artists out there with vision and I hope that you are one of them. But, if I do decide to do an art show this year, please don't tell me you could take a picture like mine if you haven't even tried.