![\"The](\"http:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Naumkeag-Diana-2.jpg\")
<\/a>The statue \u00ab\u00a0Diana Robing\u00a0\u00bb is a replica of the one placed there by Mabel Choate’s mother. It was recreated\u00a0by Robert Shure of Skylight Studios in Woburn, who was once a student of the original statue’s sculptor, Archangelo Cascieri.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Traditional sculpture is also used in traditional ways at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, Massachusetts. Urns sit beside the staircase that leads to the garden. Spouting dolphins serve as a centrepiece of the fountain in the French flower garden and spouting rocks do the same\u00a0in the Italian walled garden.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>This fruitful goddess placed in the entry courtyard suits the architecture of Edith Wharton’s country house, The Mount.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Also at\u00a0The Mount now is a temporary sculpture exhibition that includes several dozen sculptures by different artists displayed throughout the 50-acre grounds. Having visited The Mount several years ago, I\u00a0probably would not have returned\u00a0but\u00a0this exhibition, subtitled Sculpture, Culture & Nature, drew me back.<\/p>\n
Encouraging repeat visits\u00a0was exactly what Susan Wissler, executive director of The Mount, hoped to accomplish:\u00a0\u201cSculpture on the grounds provides our visitors a new way to view\u00a0Edith Wharton\u2018s property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, yes and no. The open woods flanking\u00a0the entry driveway are quite beautiful, particularly in those areas where vinca, or periwinkle,\u00a0provides texture under stately trees. Some sculptures drew my attention to these trees and woods, others emphasized\u00a0the contrast of open lawn.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>\u00ab\u00a0Elastic Limit\u00a0\u00bb by Ann Jon<\/p><\/div>\n
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Others, however, felt out of place, as uncomfortable in the setting as I would be in a whalebone corset. Consider this sculpture titled \u00ab\u00a0Metro.\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0I liked the piece. I liked the colour, the movement, the sense of urban bustle it produced. But not\u00a0when\u00a0sited\u00a0in a garden built in 1902.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Philip Marshall’s \u00ab\u00a0Metro\u00a0\u00bb is full of the movement suggested by its title.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Walking through the grounds at The Mount, I realized that for me an aesthetic response to a work of art is\u00a0not enough. I want a sculpture to do more than look attractive. I want it to add something to the experience of being present in a\u00a0particular place, at a\u00a0particular time.<\/p>\n
This may be an unfair way to judge sculptures that are installed temporarily. But I can’t deny that my desire for relevance influences how I respond to what I see. However appealing a\u00a0sculpture is\u00a0visually, unless it\u00a0conveys an idea that relates to the site itself, or to something that happened there, or to the garden designer’s ideas — in this case, to Wharton’s ideas about architecture and design — for me it falls short.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Philip Marshall’s sculpture is jarring when seen from the French flower garden at The Mount.<\/p><\/div>\n
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You could argue that \u00ab\u00a0Metro\u00a0\u00bb is meant\u00a0to be seen\u00a0in relation to the house and to the French flower garden in order\u00a0to create tension between now and then. You could argue that the location mirrors Wharton’s writings that broke with societal norms. But for me the jarring effect didn’t contribute to an enhanced experience of the site, its history or its role as a showplace for Wharton’s ideas about\u00a0culture and the arts.\u00a0The links the sculpture suggested\u00a0were simply out of sync.<\/p>\n
At Fruitlands Museum, about an hour west of Boston, I saw another temporary sculpture exhibition called Art in Nature. Fruitlands was an\u00a0experimental utopian community founded in 1843 and led by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane. Bronson Alcott, father of the author Louisa May Alcott, was a Transcendentalist. He and Lane came with their families to rural Massachusetts to put into practice their\u00a0beliefs that people should be self-reliant, live independently and think for themselves. This meant adhering to a strictly vegan diet, refusing to use any animal\u00a0products and rejecting products like cotton and molasses\u00a0that were the result of slave labour. They named the commune Fruitlands to indicate\u00a0that they intended to\u00a0live off the fruit of the land. But since they were totally unskilled at farming, intellectuals who preferred talking to ploughing, their idealistic experiment failed.<\/p>\n
At Fruitlands one sculpture expressed this history in a strikingly successful way. \u00ab\u00a0Ladder to Fruitlands\u00a0\u00bb was intriguing visually, but more significantly, it added meaning to the setting. It provoked thought, and not only about how the unsupported ladder was\u00a0held erect.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>\u00ab\u00a0Ladder to Fruitlands\u00a0\u00bb by Gianna Stewart<\/p><\/div>\n
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Those of you who are regular readers of this blog know that I use sculpture in my garden, Glen Villa. Some sculptures are my own, some are made by others. \u00a0I use\u00a0art outdoors\u00a0because I believe that it\u00a0heightens and strengthens the impact of a\u00a0space and helps to make\u00a0a garden meaningful in a way that plants alone do not. (Since I also believe\u00a0that the most successful private gardens are those with a personal stamp, I encourage others to\u00a0use art to make\u00a0their gardens distinctly their own.)<\/p>\n
Looking at outdoor art as intensively as I’ve done this week, I’ve\u00a0realized that a piece of sculpture, however visually pleasing it may be, is successful for me only\u00a0when it relates to its setting both aesthetically and in terms of its meaning and intent. When it unites\u00a0these things, my\u00a0aesthetic response is heightened; I look more carefully at links between\u00a0the sculpture’s lines and forms and those\u00a0of the garden around it. \u00a0My intellectual response is called into play as I consider\u00a0how the\u00a0ideas and concepts of the sculpture relate to the world outside the garden walls. A sculpture that combines\u00a0these things for me takes a garden to a higher level, to something beyond itself.<\/p>\n
At the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, one\u00a0sculpture achieved this in full. Titled \u00ab\u00a0Tower,\u00a0\u00bb the sculpture falls across green grass, its black steel\u00a0ribs twisted and contorted like a wounded animal.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>\u00ab\u00a0Tower\u00a0\u00bb by Monika Sosnowska<\/p><\/div>\n
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Seeing it, who could fail to make a connection to the Twin Towers, or if not to that specific event, to the collapse of a symbol of financial power and authority? Yet along with a sense of loss, the piece produced a sense of joy and playfulness as children made their way gingerly through the innards of the beast.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>A view of the interior workings of \u00ab\u00a0Tower\u00a0\u00bb by Monika Sosnowska, minus children and parents.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Near the sculpture was a grove of pine trees. The area was beautiful in itself, but seen in conjunction with \u00ab\u00a0Tower\u00a0\u00bb it became a cathedral with trees aligned like columns to form a processional pathway to another time.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>A grove of trees acquires meaning when considered\u00a0in relation to \u00ab\u00a0Tower.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p><\/div>\n
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At the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, a recent installation by the German artist Thomas Sch\u00fctte raised\u00a0sculpture to a high level, in actual as well as metaphoric terms. \u00ab\u00a0Crystal\u00a0\u00bb sits atop a hillside with views onto the museum below and the town beyond. Seemingly simple, the wooden building is a blow-up of the structure of a crystal. It has no right angles. Backing onto green woods, it\u00a0almost glistens in its purity.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>\u00ab\u00a0Crystal\u00a0\u00bb by Thomas Sch\u00fctte<\/p><\/div>\n
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The workmanship was wonderful, with no signs of one piece of wood joining another. This absence of joints created an interior that was extraordinarily smooth. Running my hand over the surface, the wood felt cool and clear, like polished crystal itself.<\/p>\n
At odds with this uniformity was the outlook\u00a0onto the field beyond, where contrast seemed all: from smooth interior surfaces to the rough textures of nature, from dim light to bright sunshine, from enclosed space to open air. Best of all, though, was how the view was defined, the crystalline structure creating an asymmetry that focused\u00a0on the beauties of the natural landscape beyond. Aesthetics and meaning combined.<\/p>\n
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