Human Flower Project

Monday, March 31, 2008

Why Callas Must Moan: Jay Yan

With callas that sigh, a California artist combines digital media and fresh flowers with his art world savvy to entice an international audience.

A gallery goer bends down to attend Jay Yan’s Whisper
Photo: Jay Yan

A few fundamentals. Flowers contain the sex organs of plants—it’s true. And yes, art is a form of exhibitionism.

A delightful young artist from Los Angeles, Jiacong (Jay) Yan, has turned these basics into interactive works designed to allure and startle. In these times, artists who allure only tend to be dismissed as frivolous. (A shame, we say. How many Watteaus have turned to truck driving?)

What drew us to Jay were the flowers in his piece Whisper. In a dark room, nine white calla lilies stand illuminated from above, and as you approach them, you hear each flower moaning tenderly. If there’s an auditory equivalent of “voyeurism,” here it is, sighing in a public gallery. Since it’s just flowers, not a writhing woman, listening is socially acceptable, sort of; but calling it “art” is the real kiss of guilt-freedom.

Jay, born 1983 in Shanghai, moved to the U.S. in 1990 and now lives in Los Angeles. “I am born Chinese, raised American, and now because Chinese art is so hot, Chinese once more,” he states in an online bio. We enjoy how Jay both plays along with many rules of the art world and breaks the big one—disclosing that there ARE rules everyone plays by. He very generously wrote to us about the evolution of Whisper, an intriguing story, we think, as it illustrates some of the pressures—social, conceptual, financial, political—that are molding contemporary artists and what they make.

Jay Yan

”Whisper came to me when I was kicking a ball around with a friend. Like anything worth making, it came inexplicably,” Jay writes. “I said to myself, ‘If flowers could talk, what would they say?’ We explored romantic notions, agricultural notions, environmental complaints, and then realized, ‘Wait, all these notions are placed on flowers by society.’ Like my professor Jennifer Steinkamp once said, ‘Flowers are innocent. Flowers do not represent love, charity, sorrow, friendship —if society was not around. What do flowers do if we really abstract it enough?’ Well, that’s obvious, right? sex.”

All the classroom philosophizing, considerations of social constructedness and the like, land back at square one. Nonetheless, most “serious” contemporary artists feel obligated to engage in such a conceptual workout.

Back to Jay: “Again, idea of sex and flowers—not new. Georgia O’Keefe explored it extensively through her paintings, and Robert Mapplethorpe did through his photography. I wanted to reference both in Whisper. (Also, I found a company in Japan that makes flowers talk! Too bad they’re out of business now, haha. The talking flower didn’t prove to be that popular; I think I was their only customer).” We wrote a bit about that product, Jay, right here. Good to hear from one person—as you say, maybe the only one—who bought it.

He goes on: “So the piece consists of 9 flowers, each of them calla lilies. Calla lilies being not only the best flower for talking but also Georgia O’Keefe and Mapplethorpe both used it extensively in their works. The sexualization of calla lilies is quite explored in art history. I included a very strong spot light from above the piece to give it the shadows Mapplethorpe uses so well.”

Exploring the precedents for his subject, Jay fulfills another another artistic obligation. The point is not to imitate what’s come before but to advance past it somehow—either slaying your forebears or, more benignly, standing on their shoulders. Noting that many an art historian has written about human sexuality and callas, Jay mentions only art celebrities of the recent past—O’Keefe and Mapplethorpe— maybe because their popularity serves as a kind of cultural shorthand.

Jay Yan’s Whisper during its exhibition in Shanghai
Callas must not have been available; these look like Easter lilies (Lilium longiflorum)
Photo: Jay Yan

“The flowers each moan softly like during intimacy, and it’s a female voice,” Jay writes. “I know, sounds very sexist. Let me tell you another story....

“So at first, I had each flower whisper prepared text by my friends who all gave me their favorite lines they like to whisper to someone’s ear during intimacy. Then I recorded both male and female voice actor tracks. Oh boy, was that hard. First off, I auditioned 120 people. Here is one typical result from an actor:

“The funny part was, his girlfriend was next to him, so I gave her a quick glance like, ‘Does he talk to you like this normally?’

“Then I got criticized by a curator at the Getty about the choice of words (well ‘criticized’ is a strong word— more like, he was interested in buying it, then he asked about the text, and when I told him, he stopped becoming interested). This coupled with each flower having a different voice proved not that interesting after a while, and the electronics for making each flower having a different voice becoming expensive and hard to find. I decided they should all be the same.” Maybe if a few gladioli, pansies and snapdragons had been mixed in, different “texts” would have been warranted.

But, Jay, how rare it is for artists to admit that the wrinkled nose of a museum official or gallery owner or some other arbiter changed their creative course! As heliotropic flowers turn their faces to the sun, artists intent on growing their careers do heed the responses of authorities. It happens all the time!  And of course there are feasibilities to consider. Media artists can dream beyond their technical capacities, and their finances. Let’s be real.

“The reduction of audible words to a moan came about because Art is international these days. Hell, 100% of all my shows are all overseas in non-English speaking countries. How can they understand the sexualities of the piece if they don’t speak English? So to the dismay of many of my female friends, but support of all my female friends that make art (funny how making art changed your opinions) I auditioned for moans.”

What used to be called art’s “universality” is now a feature of art world globalism. And Jay neatly avoided what might have been a linguistic barrier, by nixing words.

Listening with happiness to Whisper
Photo: Jay Yan

“That was another 60 horrible auditions. But I finally came up with one that was great. I liked her because just listening to her can invoke the feeling of eroticism instantly in any language. I like the idea of people at an art museum or gallery in public and putting their ear to the piece and hearing it and getting turned on because it’s such a socially inappropriate thing, thus taboo. And taboo is the basis of eroticism (so it’s like a loop!).” See above.

Though Whisper’s blooms and sighs both travel easily across international boundaries, Jay points out how variously the piece has been received.

“In China, since sex in art is taboo enough to get you banned, I had a show and when the censors came to inspect the show, I unplugged the work so they just thought it was a nice looking sculpture. During the opening, a famous curator commented that he was amazed I got away with such a piece in China. The censors came back the next day apparently, but I think a janitor accidentally unplugged the piece! haha.

“In Asia, men love the piece. Many women like it, but are apprehensive about it. I suspect it could be like a Confucius thing (like how it is only appropriate for Chinese women to associate with men in church). This might be a bias, but it’s my observation from hanging around Chinese churches at a young age. Sex is still soooooo taboo in China.

“The opposite is found in, say, Europe where women all love the piece. They openly tell me and some have offered me drugs because they appreciated the experience with the piece so much.” Not exactly “fame, money, and beautiful lovers,” but, hey, there’s a recession going on.

“As opposed to men in Europe, who are very restrained about their contact with the piece. An observer said to me at a show, ‘The piece is so sensual, it’s surprising a man made it.’ I think this is the interesting part, I think the sensuality turns men off in Europe because they might fear losing their manhood in public by being near the piece. They loved the giant robot hand that was next to my piece!

“Oh, and Germans generally dislike the piece. I still haven’t figured out why.” General Germans, please let us hear from you.

Congratulations and nine breathy thanks to Jay for his account of a provocative Human Flower Project, its creation and reception. In case you don’t have the opportunity to see and hear Whisper in person, Jay has supplied a video on his website.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Falklands Flowers at 52° Latitude S.

Even on windy islands of peat in the far Southern Hemisphere, if there are Anglos, there will be gardens, too.

The garden at the Government House in Stanley
Falkland Islands, Februrary 2008
Photo: Sharen Branscome

A territory hospitable to penguins doesn’t put most people in a gardening mood. But most people are not English people, and they’re the ones who, mainly, settled the Falkland Islands. Shallow soil be damned. What’s a little Antarctic wind? There WILL be gardens.

Friends Jim and Sharen were recently in Stanley—at least Sharen was, while Jim played shuffleboard on the ship and sent out email: “The wind was still blowing at 41 mph this morning when we arrived....” That’s tough on plants. But Sharen found some fascinating gardens around town. The best known, likely the grandest, is outside the Government House, built in 1845 to be home for the presiding Englishman here. As Jim and Sharen discovered in southern Chile, lupines are the showboat garden flowers of the far southern hemisphere. Some grow tall as hollyhocks. The flower stalks bristle with color all the way up—you’ve got a tiger by the tail!

There’s also a big greenhouse and nursery on the grounds for growing the governor’s vegetables. It’s a long choppy ride to the supermarket in Chile (since the war with Argentina in 1982, Falkland Islanders tend to go the extra mile).

Though the islands are way far south, at 52 degrees latitude, the climate here is generally called “temperate.” For example, it’s a very reasonable 61 degrees at Mount Pleasant Airport today. Still, growing things is tough because the islands’ soil consists of ”shallow peat over clay” and the winds blow steady and harsh. “Once you get outside the landscaped yards in town, there is nary a tree or bush to be found. Anywhere. None. There is one trial nursery for trees, but no natural greenery reaching above about 12” above ground.”

Felton’s Flower (Calandrinia feltonii)
rescued from extinction by gardeners
Image: Falklands Conservation

All this makes islanders exceptionally proud of the native wildflowers—the species that can make it. Herds of sheep about did in Felton’s Flower (Calandrinia feltonii), an endemic plant that would be extinct today, had it not been for the acquisitive efforts of Falklander gardeners.  Pale Maiden (Olysnium filifolium) is the Falklands’ national flower. Botanist J. D. Hooker described “grass plains...almost whitened by the profusion of its pendulous, snowy bells” in “the spring month of November.” That was a hundred years ago.  We understand Pale Maiden isn’t so plentiful now.

Gnome Garden in Stanley, Falkland Islands
Photo: Brian Lockett

Resignation to “dwarf” plant varieties and delight in the islands’ abundant bird life may have inspired this garden in Stanley. Photographer Brian Lockett provides this description. “The yard was tiered. The lowest tier of the garden was occupied by dozens of garden gnomes. There was a ceramic Mexican burro and a pair of plastic, pink flamingoes behind them. Farther up, there were a couple of species of ceramic geese. A large shrub in the highest tier was surrounded by a collection of ceramic Gentoo Penguins and topped by a ceramic hawk.” You will also want to experiment with Brian’s alternative view of this yard: ”Cross your eyes” he suggests, “to see the gnome garden in 3-D.”

Jim, have you tried that? You don’t even have to leave the ship!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Hallmark Quits the Flower Business

The first name in U.S. greeting cards—and PG-rated TV dramas—has not done so well selling flowers.

“When you care enough to send the very best….” To the breast-beating motto of the Hallmark card company, we now add: “When you know enough to get out of flower retailing....”

Hallmark has done just that. The company announced that it will stop “its direct-to-consumer flowers and gifts business by the end of April.”
 
Hallmark Flowers began as a pilot retailing program in 1999, launching in 2001 and mailing out its first catalogue in 2005. The company marketed flowers and other gifts through both the catalogue and a website. Jennifer Mann, reporting for Hallmark’s hometown paper the Kansas City Star, quotes company spokesperson Julie O’Dell: ““Basically, we have taken a close, thorough look at the current competitive marketplace — particularly for flowers — and our business model and have determined that the investments we needed to make to keep those businesses running and profitable simply couldn’t guarantee the results we needed.”

Does that mean margins were too low, postal rates too high (Hallmark Flowers mailed a whopping eight catalogues to customers last year), or flower sales are declining? Or could it be that the greeting card giant never understood flowers as gifts?

We have no inside scoop, but we do know that buying greeting cards and buying flowers are very different. And while Hallmark knows a thing or ten thousand about the former, that knowledge might have botched their efforts with the latter.

When we shop for a greeting card (being too lazy to make one ourselves), we know we’ll have to settle for something generic – “Sympathy” “Uncle Birthday” “Baby Shower” or, preferably, “Blank.” It’s our lucky day if we find one card that doesn’t resort to a joke about farting or a photo of porpoises. And if it’s not our lucky day, well, it’s the thought that counts.

But with flowers, generic will not do. We’re always looking for something fresh and explicitly personal. We’ll try the patience of any florist insisting on shasta daisies over gerberas, blue delphinium not purple, sweetheart roses rather than the long stemmed kind….

Online flower sellers and catalogues aren’t evil, they just have no way to offer nuance or serendipity. Also, when the catalogue goes to press, in January, there’s no way to know whether the white larkspur available March 27th will be raggedy or heavenly, or not white at all but pink.

Hallmark had built a “state of the art” flower-handling facility near Memphis, where ProFlowers and 1-800-Flowers also have distribution centers. Now, unfortunately, 100 people there in Southaven, Tennessee, and in Kansas City will lose their jobs.  We wish them something better. Otherwise we consider the demise of Hallmark Flowers to be good news and good business. Ease up on the farting jokes, people, and keep on doing what you do “very best.”

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Poodle Dog & Other ‘Biting’ Flowers

You know better than to eat just any flower (right?). With spring coming into bloom, check the picking impulse, too. Some blossoms will punish you for it.

Poodle dog bush (Turricula parryi) in flower—
It’s a tempting year for California hikers
Photo (detail): Arnie (fractalv)

In our continuing effort to keep looking beyond “just pretty” where flowers are concerned, we were thrilled—wincingly—to come upon Eugene Fields’s ominous story of ”poodle dog bush.” Sounds like man’s best friend. But Fields reports that the lavender flowers of Turricula parryi will bite.

The plant is blooming heartily now through the Santiago and Modjeska canyons of California. It’s an especially good year for the plant, as last October’s wildfires cleared the way for its resurgence. Hikers will encounter the tall blooming stalks now and may be tempted to break off a stem or two or three. Better leave that poodle be. The flowers produce an allergic skin reaction similar to poison oak.  “Symptoms range from itching to a rash or blisters lasting as long as two weeks. George Ewan with the Orange County Fire Authority said the pain is reminiscent to coming in contact with stinging nettles. ‘It’s like that that except it doesn’t wear off,’ Ewan said. ‘It goes for quite a while.’”

Unless you’re into scourges, pass on by (Info on newfangled styles of penance available upon request).

Many thanks to Arnie for supplying us with the beautiful photo of poodle dog bush in bloom (above). He writes that this specimen of Turricula parry was “found at about 5200’ elevation in the San Bernardino National Forest near Lake Arrowhead, CA. Bush was about 6 feet round and flowers towered over my head, the flowers being about 1” across.”

Another biting flower, from the Catalpa tree (Catalpa speciosa)
Photo: Missouri State Univ.

The poodle dog led us down a trail in search of other flowers toxic to human skin. The Ag Extension folks in Connecticut provide this good list of plants that cause dermatitis. Sometimes it’s the leaves, bark, roots, or sap that irritate skin, but flowers, even “pretty” ones, can cause outbreaks too. To use Cesar Milan’s terminology, ”Red Zone Dogs” of the flower world include Catalpa speciosa, Anthemis arvensis, and Ailanthus altissima (Tree of Heaven). The latter is often considered a “trash tree,” one with some fight in it. Ohio State botanists warn, “Gardeners who fell the tree may suffer rashes.”

Hickey? Nope. A blister caused by Giant Hogweed
Photo: Canadian Weed Science Society

Nobody should tangle with Zigadenus paniculatus flowers, which go by the name ”Death lily” for a reason. And we’ve written here before about the perils of Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). In case you forgot, the photo at right shows what its blooms can do.

Just a drop more toxicity-- Florists have learned the hard way that some of our favorite flowers can injure the skin. No...not tulips? ‘Fraid so.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Easter Nests & Flower Magic

As Texas springs into bloom, a DeWitt County family reunites and savors a custom from the Old Country.

An Easter nest made at the Ideus family’s gathering
April 2003
Photo: Bill Bishop

On the Saturday before Easter, the grown up children, their own children and grandkids, cousins from San Antonio and Austin, and a few welcome stragglers converge on the Ideus farm near Meyersville, Texas. Merton and Marjorie Ideus, who milked cattle for 46 years, don’t believe in leaving things to chance. The Easter bunny needs – and deserves—coaxing.  So if you’re expecting chocolates and pink eggs, it’s time to get busy and make an Easter nest.

Especially when Easter comes late, DeWitt County is lush this time of year. The land is a living kaleidoscope, sparkling with coreopsis, Indian paintbrush, poppies and bluebonnets.

“De Witt County is known for having the best wildflowers in the state,” says Bob Orr, Marjorie’s cousin. In fact he says that several times. And having been there in the spring of 2003, we wouldn’t contradict him. That year, Marjorie and Merton generously invited us to come on down from Austin and take part in their family Easter tradition, a human flower project reaching back many generations.

Picking wildflowers on the Ideus farm, Meyersville, TX
Photo: Bill Bishop

Along with about 20 Ideuses and Orr cousins, we loaded into the beds of a couple of pickups and bumped along through cool grassy pastures to the back of the farm. What a banner year for wildflowers! Piling out, we fanned apart and began to pick our fill, engrossed in the life beneath our feet. Airy purple Texas vervrain, winecups, and Indian blanket ... for once, to have an Easter-bunny’s-eye-view of the world.

With baskets, hats, pails, and coffee cans full of blooms, we rumbled back to the house, where Marjorie set out paper plates on picnic tables in the breezeway. The fresh wildflowers were strewn in the center, as young, old, and middling began fashioning the ultimate Easter bunny come-on. All kinds— geometric designs like gemstones, tufts of color, weaves, and heavenly pile-ons in the spirit of banana splits.

Marjorie and Merton play Easter bunny while unsuspecting relatives enjoy lunch inside
Photo: Bill Bishop

Marjorie and Merton explained that this was an old world custom their German ancestors had brought with them to Central Texas. Their Duderstadt, Diebel, Schewitz, and Egg—yes, truly!—forebears are buried in the cemetery of St. John Lutheran Church close by. Marjorie recalls that in her youth the Easter nests were laid on the ground, made of Spanish moss decorated with wildflowers. But in recent times moss hasn’t been so plentiful as it once was in DeWitt County. For several years she’s opted for paper plates and thus far the Easter bunny hasn’t turned up his nose.

With stalks and crushed flowers swept away, each finished nest was beautiful; all together they were magic, enough to lure distant cousins and the more elusive genie of spring, hopping or otherwise. (For a bunch more photos of the Ideauses’ Easter-nest-making, check out the slideshow on Daily Yonder.) Marjorie called us inside for a delicious supper, featuring sausage made with Merton’s time-honored recipe (“40 pounds of meat, 1 pound of salt, ½ pound of black pepper”). Scalloped potatoes, jello with oranges, pineapple and cottage cheese, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, lettuce and tomato salad, and a 7-up cake with coconut— as everyone, almost, settled in to this wonderful meal, who noticed that Marjorie and Merton had vanished from the scene?

Roy Harris, from Austin, proudly shows his first Easter nest
Photo: Bill Bishop

After dessert we trailed outside and found that, silently, the Easter bunny had arrived. On top of our nests of flowers there were colored eggs and homemade cookies, pinwheels, stuffed rabbits, and chocolates!

“We’re trying to build memories,” Marjorie said, as her great granddaughters, with wildflowers over both ears, spun their green and silver pinwheels.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

East of Easter - Zoroastrian

One of the oldest New Year celebrations on earth takes place today—the Navrooz—marked with flowers and fire.

Zoroastrian priests perform a Jashan/rite to induct a young new member into the faith
Photo: Tim Page

Today, March 20 (or yesterday, the 19th, depending on your continent) marks the Spring Equinox. For Zoroastrians around the globe, it is also the New Year, or Navrooz. We send special greetings to Ketty Wadia and the Zoroastrian community here in Austin, Texas, who back in 2003 kindly invited us to participate in their beautiful New Year’s celebration.

We were, of course, especially enthralled with the priest’s use of flowers in the Jashan/ceremony. As guests, young and old, all dressed in finery, sat around the edges of a North Austin livingroom, priest Khurshed Katki carried out the New Year’s ritual. It involved many set prayers, fire, and the gathering and placing of specific numbers of flowers in an array of bowls and dishes. This website offers some explicit directions for carrying out the “Parsi Version” of Jashan (the Parsis being those Zoroastrians who centuries ago fled Iran and settled in southwestern India).

The Norooz is celebrated today in Iran also - by Zoroastrians as well as other ethnic Persians. “Why has this festival survived? There have been major attempts by the Muslim rulers over the centuries to minimize it, ban it or get rid of it once and for all. The reasons for their failure should be sought in the spirit of this festival. Contrary to the Islamic traditions where death and martyrdom mark all the major rituals, No Ruz is a celebration of life.”

The presence of flowers confirms that.

Zoroastrian priest Khurshed Khatki performs the New Year’s Jashan
Austin, Texas, 2003
Photo: Human Flower Project

For those who would like to learn more of Zoroastrianism, called the world’s first “revealed religion,” there’s plenty to read. Having been around since 3000 B.C., this religious tradition—also strong on cosmology—has a rich history. Many religious historians contend that the Magi ("Three Wise Men") who followed “the star” to discover the Christ Child were Zoroastrian astronomers.

Though the Zoroastrians comprise a tiny minority in India, they have made their mark, primarily in service to the poor. And they are making their beneficent mark here in Texas, too.

After the Jashan ceremony five years ago, we spun around asking questions about the types of flowers used, the meaning of fire, the reason for the priest’s white mask, the names of all the dishes about to be served… One dignified lady gently called us aside.

She said, gazing at us quite directly: “Paying attention to all of the things—how we use flowers, our food, our dress, our burial customs, you have failed to learn anything. Our religion is not in any of these things. We believe in good thought, good speech, good action. That’s it!”

So came a stiff spring wind, blowing off our little journalistic toupee. How embarrassing, and bracing. What a high standard to live by. 

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Vanitas: Mocafico & the Masters, Old and Young

Flowers, skulls, lemons, bubbles, photographer Guido Mocafino resurrects an old genre, eeriness intact.

Vanitas, by Philippe de Champaigne (c.1671)
Via: Wiki

There’s a skull in our garden. We splash it with water and it parches again. It sinks its teeth in a pot with violas, and when the violas die – it grins in the dirt. This is our backyard “Vanitas” – though the garden itself proves everything is passing.

We thank Ian McKay for passing along notice of Guido Mocafico, a dazzling French artist, and his latest exhibition: Nature Morte: In the Company of Old Masters. Mocafico’s new pieces are still life photographs in homage to the 17th Century French and Dutch painters – vanitas kings like Pieter Claesz and Jacques de Gheyn and Philippe de Champaigne.

Vanitas images are peculiar—maybe even perverse, as they relish and exploit the same sensuous pleasures they condemn. The Old Master works that Mocafico’s photographs imitate are eerie enough, but turning historical, painterly realism inside out—via contemporary photography—adds a shudder. Double your virtuosity, double your necrophilia.

Omnia Vanitas (2007)
chromogenic print by Guido Mocafico
Photo: Bernheimer

Mocafico reassembles familiar articles from the vanitas kit-bag – like skulls and flowers. (Illustrator Alton Kelly seized on this same combination for The Grateful Dead—an image Kelly lifted from 19th century illustrator Edmund Sullivan —thus spake a trillion decals, t-shirts, and tattoos). Mocafico chooses roses and bellflowers, with a peony (?) thrown in for exuberance; two beautiful heads of wheat also poke from between the bones. Symbols this potent can’t really be deciphered (as in “the skull with flowers refers to human vanity and the transience of all earthly things”); better to leave them be, like our little plaster head in the garden. Let time do its work, and meanings, doubts, revulsions, amusements go on rippling.

Bouquet of Flowers in a Niche
chromogenic print by Guido Mocafico (2006)
Photo: Bernheimer

Mocafico’s photographs, including the knockouts above and at right, are on view now at Bernheimer gallery in Munich, through March 29. The exhibit then moves to Colnaghi in London, May 15 through June 18. (Find the full catalogue, in English and German, here.)

Here’s one more ripple: from Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos (LXXXI). For added frisson listen to il miglior fabbro himself read the whole canto.

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry…

Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Awakening

Cattle ranchers, church-goers, writers—those who look for signs will see them, especially in early spring. A yearning for fresh collards leads Jill Nokes to revelations in the fields of Granger and on the street in Houston. Thank you, Jill!

Testimony from the yard of Erma Lee, Houston, TX
Photo (detail): Jill Nokes

By Jill Nokes

At the end of February, I came across a recipe for minestrone soup that called for collard greens to be used in place of kale.  Collard or turnip greens are typically not part of my cooking repertoire, as my mother was from New England and we never had that kind of food.  But as I pondered over the selection of the large, coarse, bundled collard leaves in the grocery store, I held in my mind the many memories of driving past “truck” gardens in the country in late winter.  I recalled endless versions of the same dirt plots, bare of everything except a few new onion sets and these tattered clumps of greens, waiting for spring.  Old tin cans and wire cages would be hanging on the fence posts, ready for the tomatoes and purple-hull peas.

Spring in Texas is all about pure potential.  Our short winters have usually brought us enough cold blasts to make people eager for the warm, soft nights of late March and April, and for a while we enjoy being in denial about the inevitable brutal heat and drought that waits on the other side of Easter. 

Texas redbud (Cercis canadensis var. texensis)
March 15, 2008, Austin, TX
Photo: Human Flower Project

I always want to slow down the last days of winter and the earliest signs of spring. I don’t want my redbud to fade in eight days, and I don’t want the temperature to jump up to 85 degrees so soon after being in the comfortable upper 60’s.  But signs of “The Awakening” appear more vividly with each day, even in between the last cold fronts.

I first heard the term “the awakening” from my friend Betsy Ross, who, with her son J.R. Builta, operate a grass-fed organic beef operation in the blackland prairies near Granger, Texas.  After years of struggling to support their farm using conventional herbicide and fertilizer treatments for their land and feedlot finishing for their cattle, they discovered that only if they focussed on restoring the depleted soil biology in their pastures could their herds and planted forage crops thrive. To acquire the knowledge of just what their different pastures were missing, Betsy had to learn to be a keen observer of the signals Mother Nature was sending.  And one of the most important things to watch for were the mystical signs that spring was on its way.

“What I heard from the Oregon Tilth folks a couple of years ago was that the earth begins to awaken slowly and, then one day everything pops up at once,” Betsy explained to me. “It is that ‘awakening’ that appealed to me, as for several years I could pick up a slow rise of upward energy out in the pastures. One can almost feel it beginning throughout 2-3 week period. When one is grazing intensively as we do, ‘catching this wave’ means we can begin grazing aggressively - because we know old winter is about over with and wonderful spring is about to explode and every green plant jumps up out of the ground. We can feed out the last of the hay with confidence, and let the cattle graze the grass a little shorter.”

Betsy’s description revives all kinds of notions of the romantic pastoralists: farmers who get intoxicated by the smell of warm, moist, living earth, the sounds of animals lowing in the evening, and the satisfaction of collaborating with Mother Nature to make things grow.  The best thing about it is that they are actually succeeding in this holistic method of farming, and inspiring others to join them.

The Gathering Area, behind Erma Lee’s house in the Heights, Houston
Photo: Jill Nokes

Inspiration and awakening were also on my mind when I recently met Ms. Erma Lee, resident of Houston, in her amazing garden.  On the way to meet a friend of my daughter’s soon-to-be new mother-in-law, we stopped off in the Heights neighborhood to meet Erma.

Erma’s “Inspirational Art Garden” is completely preposterous. Facing a busy street, the whole thing is made up of glass jars and vases, balls and vessels of all kinds, filled with colored water.  Her special front bed is actually enclosed in store-front glass.  It is ridiculously generous and fragile.  Everything could be destroyed instantly by someone chunking a brick into the yard from a passing car. To Erma, this is not a concern, because God directed her efforts after she had “an awakening.”

Lee explains the biblical messages in “The Inspirational Art Garden”
Photo: Jill Nokes

As a member of Joel Osteen’s huge Lakewood Church (the 16,000 seat “worship facility” is located in the former Houston Rockets sports area), Erma was taught to make herself ready at any moment for a personal epiphany.  So when it came about three years ago, she went into a whirlwind of activity, changing everything inside and out of her house, and began incorporating messages from biblical scripture into decorative arrangements on view for all to see.  In the rear “gathering area,” she has constructed colorful backdrops using a signature style of figures made from old patio furniture and decorative fans from the Dollar Store.  When giving tours of her place, she explains the meaning behind her decorations with the fervent zeal of a performance artist, and as someone who has been “awakened” to a higher purpose.  For us lucky visitors, whether we are there because we are attracted to all the shiny glass like magpies, or because we yearn to be changed by a holy touch, we all benefit from Erma’s ardent creation.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Today’s Hawaiian Lei (Kiss Not Included)

Competition from Asian growers and airport security are stifling Hawaii’s famed floral greeting.

Mr. and Mrs. Mainland Get a Blast of Aloha
Image: art.com

In the late 1800s, visiting Hawaii meant sloshing over hundreds of ocean miles: The Boat Days, they call it in the islands. To be greeted with a lei after braving the seas (or before, if one were headed back to the mainland) seems to have caught on quickly, an indelible tourist experience that swiftly became part of travelers’ expectations and tour guides’ provisions. Lore grew around the lei custom, too:

“It was said if a departing visitor tossed their lei into the ocean and it floated back to the beach, it meant that the person would someday return to the islands. Hundreds of leis could be seen floating in the crystal waters off of Diamond Head as a ship steamed away.” (Anyone who finds this too sentimental, please break a brick with your head!)

Lei Vendors in Honolulu
Photo: via art.com

The University of Hawaii has posted a brief history of the lei tradition based around interviews with Honolulu lei vendors. It notes, “By the turn of the (20th) century, the lei industry was well established in Honolulu. Hawaiian lei sellers — generally women — were visible on the sidewalks of downtown Honolulu in the area of Hotel, Maunakea, and Kekaulike streets.” Travel to the islands swelled in the late 1920s, as Matson Navigation Company began luxury liner service between California and Honolulu.  The lei sellers, picking flowers from their own yards and local farms, strung garlands and brought them to the waterfront on steamer days (usually twice monthly). With the beginnings of air travel in the 1940s, some moved to the airport, selling their flowers from the backs of trucks.

“(We) had all these jalopies. We just build a stand on. No more electricity over there. Just a dark road and don’t even have street lights. What we have is gas lanterns. We hang it onto the stand. This is how it started,” said seller Harriet Kauwe.

And today? Hawaiian tourists have come to expect the lei greeting. And it’s still provided though the circumstances, the vendors and the flowers themselves are changing fast. Most of the lei sellers on Maunakea Street today are Filipino women, not Hawaiians. Nearly all lei greetings take place not at the shining waterfront or even the airport gate. Instead, airport regulations require “greeting companies” to station representatives in the baggage area holding out signs with passengers’ names (limousine-service style). One company explains: “After deplaning, clients should recognize their name sign. In the traditional way of saying Aloha, a lei, specially selected from one of our four service categories, will then be presented” (we’re not sure if a kiss comes with that).

Shirley Magaoay, a lei vendor born in the Philippines
at her shop on Maunakea St., Honolulu
Photo: Olivier Koning

Also, it’s likely that the flowers looped around your neck will not be Hawaiian. The state’s annual summary of the flower and nursery business found that Hawaii-grown lei flowers had been steeply declining for several years. Production of plumeria, creamy yellow and highly favored for leis, was down by half from 2002. Cultivation of pikake (Jasminum sambac), a pearly and more traditional lei flower in the islands, was down even more. “In 2002, nine growers sold 81,000 (pikake) blossoms valued at $242,000. In 2006, five growers sold 23,000 flowers worth $60,000.” Carnation and tuberose production in Hawaii has sunk also.

What’s happened? As on the mainland, U.S. flower farmers can’t beat the cheap labor costs in Latin America. And Hawaiian growers find themselves in added competition with farms in Japan and Thailand. Not only were total blooms and revenues down between 2002 and 2006, so was the acreage dedicated to lei flower production. (You can find the whole report here.) We’d suppose that as in much of the rest of the U.S., flower growing simply doesn’t look like the most lucrative use of land, especially so in Hawaii where there’s not much of it and demand for a piece of paradise is high.

The one exception in this decline of locally grown lei flowers seems to be the orchid Miss Joaquim Vanda, a splashy purple and white blossom hugely popular in the 1930s that’s making a comeback. This flower doesn’t travel well, so Hawaiian blooms can still dominate the market.  “To make a vanda lei requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 flowers,” said Richard Criley, horticulturist at University of Hawaii. “Of course, the old-style lei, the flat one, which uses only the principal lip petals, requires many, many more flowers. That would account for the increase right there.”

But Criley also believes that lei sales generally have fallen off. Perhaps Hawaii, more accessible now than ever, is also less exotic, and a fresh garland has a whiff of absurdity. All the new rules at U.S. airports have made greetings clumsy, too. “There used to be a whole slew of people waiting by the gates with lei in hand. Now, you have to wait at the baggage area, which isn’t as easy,” he says. No matter how much slack guitar music they pipe in, blinking alarms, Hertz and drug hounds, moving walkways and conveyor belts are mighty low in Aloha.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Sissinghurst: Now I See It. Now You Do, Too

The “invisible” Vita Sackville-West made a garden that launched ten-thousand gardening visions, John Levett’s among them. Ever thanks to you, John.

Essay and photos by John Levett

Connections.

I’m sitting listening to Somethin’ Else, Cannonball Adderley’s 1958 outing for Blue Note which just happens to have Miles in the band which might just happen to have sold a few more copies. It’s nothing remarkable, no doubt filled contractual obligations, kept the band off the streets and, skipping past a few concepts and events that I can only half make up, reminded me of Coltrane’s Live at the Village Vanguard, which broke up the band. Our band. That’s Stuart, Mick & Me. And the bloke who could play.

There’s nothing more certain to break up a band than drafting in someone who took all the lessons, got the certificates, could read the notes, follow the tune then throw it away, create a signature style and show the rest of us that we’re only water-carrying shufflers for the Paul Whiteman orchestra. Our band had dosed on King Oliver, Kid Ory, George Lewis and Johnny Dodds solos so why we let in a jump-jive sax player I can’t fathom. Whatever. History was against us. Lennon etc. were playing Hamburg. British Beat was only months away. And I’d already bought ‘Live,’ started collecting Coltrane, going to Joe Harriott gigs in south London, staying up late at wherever Tony Oxley [I think] was playing, then kipping on a bench on Charing Cross Station waiting for the first train out to the suburbs on Sunday morning.

Which reminded me of sitting in the back seat of a mate’s car driving down to Sevenoaks in Kent one Friday evening in 1968 and sitting next to this bloke I’d never met who asked me who I read (Orwell), who I listened to (Coltrane), who I watched (Antonioni) and so did he. We became friends for twenty years until I changed and he didn’t. In those decades he came to teach teachers, I taught kids & together we worked on learning projects for schools. Which took us to Knole House.

We asked for and got the necessary permissions to photograph the interiors of the house; being taken around by the jolly Baron Sackville who moved furniture, rearranged settings to get the best light, gave us tea and buns, access to the family photo albums and a catalogue of anecdotes. We filled our boots that day but I moved out of south London shortly afterwards and returned to Knole only some thirty years later when I thought it a good idea to take myself down there to sit in the grounds to read Woolf’s Orlando.

The Baron Sackville (who was either a Bertram, Bernard or Lionel) came to Knole as a result of the custom of primogeniture whereby all the family stuff goes to the firstborn male or, if there isn’t such a male, so on down through the family until they get one. If you’re a firstborn female then you’re invisible. Which is why Vita Sackville-West, of the same family, got the hoof, packed the mattress on the truck and headed someplace else.

Or, finally, to Sissinghurst in 1930. There were a few stops on the way but I always think that they don’t count. There’s every reason to believe that Vita was happy at Knole and bitter, if not resentful, at having to leave it. In circumstances such as that it’s not unreasonable to seek to recreate, if not the happiness, then at least the circumstances in which it might return. I’m inclined to believe that the creation of Sissinghurst was a reasonable bash at doing just that.

There are still points on the Weald of Kent (Biggin Hill, Emmetts near Westerham, Churchill’s Chartwell, the tower at Sissinghurst) where you can believe that this was England as it once was. Which it wasn’t.  It once had a thriving Mediaeval iron and charcoal industry, and forests, decimated by the said industry and Tudor demand for shipbuilding. What you can see now was created by the enclosure acts and the demand for wool. Nevertheless, Kent still passes as what you might like to think of as ye olde England; I’d happily live there and fantasize too if I could go back a century prior to stockbroker gated communities.

A couple of years ago I chanced on a first edition of Vita’s The Land and bought it for no other reason than that I thought it yet another good idea to take myself down there to sit in the grounds and read it. I’m not alone in thinking it a good idea to read originals in original settings. I’m also not alone in knowing that this is a romantic conceit. At the end of the poem is the dateline ‘Ispahan, April 1926.’ Ispahan is a bit of a schlep from the Weald but why let a continent and a half get in the way of imaginings. ( I once had the idea of travelling down to Kent to read each section of the poem in season which fell at the first hurdle. Having given up car ownership I found myself stuck one ‘raw-boned winter’ January morning on a train outside London Bridge station for fifty minutes due to signal failure; ‘Classic monotony’ was written on line three.)

When you see a book called something like The English Garden through the Twentieth Century (not dissimilar to Jane Brown’s The English Garden Through the 20th Century) you can bet it’s not about your fifty square metres thick with with the gloop of clay, sand, brick chippings and builder’s rubble that you’re trying to build the New Jerusalem on. Sissinghurst, on the other hand, will feature in most of such books. In (again) Jane Brown’s Vita’s Other World, Sissinghurst is described as ‘an echo of a dream’; the dream being the Hearst-Kane ‘castle fantasy’ sometimes satisfied, as in the case of Sissinghurst, by the manor house rather than the fortress. What Vita did was to add an English garden that came to symbolize what all English gardeners sought out in whatever plot they plotted on.

I have no idea what makes up a great garden. On the other hand, I have an idea what makes up a loved one. You pay your entry fee to the excellent woman direct from a Barbara Pym novel, collect your marking-your-way-around pamphlet, pray there’ll be no coach loads of Italian tourists today (“They just have no idea of how to form a queue, darling”) and head off. Chances are that you have some idea of what to expect; you’ve glanced at the guide/garden book/magazine article/web page; you know it’s Tudor/Stuart/Victorian/Modernist; you know what’s in season. But it’s not about what you see, it’s about what you can make your own.

The wonder of Sissinghurst is that it’s approachable. You’re never likely to have a plot this big, nor the money to pay the wages, but you can take away the idea. Each part of the garden has a character, a focus, some feature that distinguishes it. Its size varies—some small intimate corner; a trough; a wall; a walk; a field. The planting changes—in shade; in distinguished borders; formal; discovered; echoes of formal landscapes; mirrors of cottage garden beds. Everything surprises—turning a corner; finding an entrance; a seat; a flight of steps; entering again through a different entrance; turning your back and finding a path. Pocket the guide and stroll; find yourself wondering if this is where you started; ask if that walk is intended to be walked; guess if you’ve passed this planting before. Like the best of all gardens, any view leads you forwards, then you turn around and you notice what you’ve just missed.

Sissinghurst is what we’d all like in our back garden plot. We get home & start the re-think. We do that because we come away from Vita’s garden believing all is possible because everything we’ve seen this day has been so intimate, curiously accessible, a picture we can steal. A vision; a big idea which we can translate. That seems to me to be her genius. It was translated into her garden notes. There is something that tells you lots about post-war Britain coming out of the column she wrote for The Observer, ‘In Your Garden’—a time, a place, a loss, an everlastingness, nous and an English sensibility (read Mollie Panter-Downes’ One Fine Day, watch David Lean’s Brief Encounter, read Orwell, be English and be born in 1944...there’s no other way of feeling it).  She was never a great novelist or poet. She wanted that but so do a lot of us; the genius in life is recognizing and capitalizing on what’s best in us. Gardening was best in her. She had all the attributes, encumbrances and drawbacks of the ‘upper’ class (never forget ‘class’; this is Britain don’t yer know) but she stumbled to get over that and improved herself; drawing herself up to be ‘dead common’ like the rest of us.

To her, gardening was improving and so it is. It has aspiration, hope, loss, disappointment, anger, creation, destruction, willfulness, humility. We learn that some things will never be and for others their time is over. We can cultivate patience or embrace heartache. We gamble and lose or briefly dwell in an unexpected success. Something works for us this year but that’s the last year ever.

And there’s community. That was another part of her accomplishment. Her writings read like an edition of ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’; whatever your age, your expertise, your plot, your problems are universal and shared. Walking around Sissinghurst brings ‘good idea,’ ‘try that,’ ‘who’d have thought,’ ‘that’d work.’ It shows possibilities; gets us thinking as gardeners; makes the heart leap; encourages.

Connections.

The first time I visited Sissinghurst I was driving home from Romney Marshes one early Autumn afternoon. That morning I’d taken a walk along the shingle of Dungerness and saw, again for the first time, Derek Jarman’s garden. It was after his death as I was searching for his grave. As I drove from Old Romney to Tunbridge Wells I saw the road for Sissinghurst; nothing grand, just a rising drove lane. As I sat in the lower meadow in late afternoon it struck me how close the two gardeners seemed; seeing something that wasn’t there.