Art in the Garden

My good friend Sally is one of nine artists in residence at the Luton Hoo Walled garden and an exhibition had been arranged for this weekend to coincide Heritage Open days and Hertfordshire Open Studio month. I took my camera and managed to catch a few moments.

The volunteer gardeners have made a wonderful job and have re-planted a section of the garden.

The artists have all created pieces connected with the history of the garden.

This piece by Abi Spendlove is about the roots put down by Lord Bute, the garden's founder, in the course of his life.  Each piece was connected with a different location.

More delicate roots in the vinery.

This installation piece by May Down was a recording  and included interviews with Land Army girls who worked on the estate during WW2. I would have loved to have had a rummage in the suitcase which was full of vintage items including the corsets.

This was Sally's installation. She was inspired by seeing large chrysalises while visiting London zoo. She has used monoprints of plants and planting lists from the garden's archive to make a set of cocoon shapes from silk and wax suspended  on cottons along one of the glasshouses. Sally's inspiration is the transient traces left over the generations within the garden. 

Sally Tyrie

These carnations below were created by Suzanne Page, they made from copies of letters written by Lord Bute.

This is an installation by ceramic artist Nici Ruggiero

I thought you'd enjoy these details.

Finally I spotted these rather splendid  cuckoo pint/lords and ladies/Arum maculatum lily stems which were glowing in the shadows.

Thank you for all of your good wishes for my Etsy shop. Now I've got that sorted I feel I can get back to creating - more later.

Have a good week, 

Jill

Exhibition at The Walled Garden

There is to be an art exhibition at the Walled Garden in Luton Hoo next weekend, which will also give anyone in the area an opportunity to  visit the gardens. I am submitting four photographs to the exhibition so I hope I shall have at least one accepted. It is the first time they have organised an open art exhibition so I wish them the very best luck as I know they have had quite a good response and I know that selecting and hanging the exhibits is a mammoth task.
Details of which photographs I have selected are on my flickr page here.

Here is the publicity for the exhibition

More information on their website here

I have had a busy couple of days, but hope to catch up with you all over the weekend.

Inside the Fern House

On my latest visit to the walled garden I got to go inside the Fern House, the large conservatory built in the 1900s by Sir Julius Wernher.

It is a 'hard hat' area.

The inside is propped up and is in a very fragile condition. It is a wooden structure and in its present state would not be able to be re-glazed as the frame could not take the weight of the glass.

What a magnificent sight it must have been, filled with exotic fruits, flowers and ferns  with its central roof tall enough for small trees. From the central atrium lead two long arms each with further glass houses branching off. One of the volunteers told me that when he started clearing this three years ago it was a tunnel of brambles and they had to hack their way into it foot by foot.

At the end of the passage is this glazed alcove which would be enough to grace the back of most peoples' homes on its  own.

The central lantern window in the roof here is mostly intact.

I shall be sharing some more photos soon.

More information:

The Walled Garden Project

Thank you

Thank you so much for your lovely comments on my 'Door' piece. Here is my second page based on the ironwork used in the flooring of the glasshouses at Luton Hoo.

'Layers'

Click on the picture for a real close--up view

This is a many layered montage based on my photographs and a few images downloaded from the internet related to the history of the estate. I started by transferring images of the ironwork from these photographs using the method I describe here. These are the photographs I used, once again just printed onto standard copy paper.

 

When I had finished covering the background I distressed it with acrylic ink and paint. I wanted to convey the idea of layers of history and had lots of images I downloaded from the web, but finally just selected a jewel from the Wernher collection and a portrait of Lady Alice plus some photographs of a racing car, WW1 home guard on parade in the park and some Land Girls. As these images may be copyright I have altered them and hopefully made them 'mine'. I was going to just lay them on top of the grid, but some how it wasn't what I wanted, so printed out a sheet of the lefthand photgraph and cut out all the holes with a craft knife leaving the leaf - I did the same with the circle pattern on the right hand picture and a couple of leaves. Placing the cut out grid on top gave me the look I wanted and I had to stick the 'photos' down carefully so some of the faces peeped through.

I then worked with more paint and ink and bits of cut-out grid to build up the composition. I finally added a border of bramble as it is growing everywhere.

 

I am pleased with this piece as it more of an 'art piece' rather than just an adapted photograph. It also has the 3D layered feel I was aiming for. I feel as if I am really finding my creative voice after many years of searching, and thank you for sharing this journey with me.

Enter here

Here is my first page in my Walled Garden Journal, it is based on a photograph (below) of one of the glasshouse doors. The distressed paint is a interior designers dream and the knotted rag used to pull the door closed has been there so long it looks part of the door. As this is a A3 book I had to print the photograph on two pieces of ordinary inkjet paper and glued it onto a page prepared with quite thick gesso and tinted ochre.  Before I printed the door I managed to straighten it in photoshop as I had to tilt the camera when taking the picture. 

I am pleased with the photograph, but there was very low light levels and I had not got my tripod with me on this occasion, I also had to stand in an awkward spot. 

In my journal I wanted to use the door as a metaphor for entering the garden - a rather obvious one, but I am not very strong on the poetic statement. I surrounded the door as if were closed and added some graffiti using words I associate with the garden. Here are a couple of details...

By the way that is a fruiting fig on the wall.

I would appreciate your comments. I want to use the photographs to make a strong statement about the place, I have another page ready to post  and just hope I can keep my enthusiasm up.

The Walled Garden Again

I love this place so much I want to show you all my photos, but I will just post a few at a time. I have two projects going in my walled garden journal which I will share later. But here a a few starters.

This gable end over a door in one of the glasshouses shows wonderful attention to detail which runs throughout the garden. I have blacked out the roof here to emphasise the shape which I am rather fond of photographing and which is beginning to reoccur in my pictures. Here are a couple of details.

I love the way the bramble has wound itself around the frame and between the glass and the polythene covering.

Looking up to where the glasshouse joins onto the outer wall of the garden the glass is broken and the polythene ripped giving a glimpse of blue sky and the ubiquitous brambles that grow everywhere, even on top of the wall.

Here is the top of the wall from the outside - you need to see this large to appreciate the silhouettes of the stems - well I love it. The wall is very high - 15 foot plus -I will check this. Here are a couple of pictures so you can get orientated with the site.

Here you can see the extent of the glasshouses, outside...

and inside.

More another time.
More info. here

stitched felt

I have been 'off-the-air' for a couple of days, but I have been busy, in the evenings I have managed to do a spot of needle-felting...

After I made the little ATC sized felt I wanted to work on a larger piece. Jane of janeville has been doing some wonderful free sewing which she calls 'slow cloth' and I have decided to stitch on this piece to my heart's content. I am trying to remember embroidery stitches from my school days. When I have had enough I think I can make a free-form purse with it. It will need lining as it is easy to poke a hole in the felt. 

I also managed to visit the Luton Hoo Walled Garden today with my camera - it was very cold so I spent a bit of time in the glasshouse, lots of inspiration. I shall post some photos on my flickr pages and share some with you soon. But here is one to be going on with.

Volunteers were working inside the conservatory clearing it, a lot of work has been done in the garden since I was there in October. It is good that the restoration is going well, but I love the stately decay.

New Project

Well not quite - it is something I started last year. You may remember the photographs I took at the Walled Garden in Luton Hoo. I have them blu-tacked to my study door and I keep thinking I must do something with them. Then one night whilst listening to the shipping forecast, trying to get to sleep - I had the idea of making a special Walled Garden Journal. So at the next opportunity I visited my nearest vendor of the wonderful Pink Pig books and bought an A3 size - still a bargain (can't remember the exact price). The A4 aren't large enough for a large print. Anyway I have experimented with transferring some images using PVA Marvin Medium and Golden matte Gel plus some or my usual paint and collage work and here is the result.

Fanlight, bricks and monogram are from my photos but I found the portraits of Lady Alice and Sir Julius Wernher on the web. It is their initials in the monogram and they restored the garden in the Edwardian period and had the amazing conservatory built. I now hope this inspires me to get back to the garden to take some more photographs and maybe do some sketching. You can see my photographs here.

 I can now see from the photograph that the monograph is not quite central or straight! How annoying. This was a transfer and stuck face down with a lot of glue - that's my excuse, but annoying all the same.

Latest pages here and here

The Walled Garden Project

It is time to share some of my first group of photographs I took at the Luton Hoo walled garden. I have managed one photo session so far. There are some general shots of the garden here in a previous post. However I am interested in compiling a more intimate portrait of the garden and glasshouses in all their glorious decay. So here are a few to begin with.

Fan light

Rust

Grating

Fork, scythe, rake

Glasshouse interior

I hope to convey the magic of the place.

More information about the project on the website

Luton Hoo Walled Garden

Gateway to the garden

Let me introduce you to the walled garden at Luton Hoo. I have an artists access card which will enable me to visit the garden a couple of days a week for the next year to take photographs or sketch or whatever. Today I had my first chance to explore and I am so excited at the opportunity I have. Let me fill you in with a quick bit of history first. The Luton Hoo estate has a long history but is most well known for its beautiful house and gardens designed by Capability Brown. In the late 1760s/70s an octagonal walled garden was built. This was to be a botanical garden to grow exotic flowers, fruit and vegetables. In the 1880s Sir Julius & Lady Alice Werner had a glass house built by Mackenzie & Moncur. After WWII the cost on running large estates became prohibitive and the garden and glass houses gradually fell into disrepare. The house was sold off and is now a luxury hotel and spa, but the estate is run by a different management. A great project is in hand to restore the garden and there are many volunteers working on researching the history of the gardens, fund raising, restoration and gardening. The garden is vast and surrounded by a 19ft wall which creates a micro-climate. There are many glass houses, an brick outbuildings which have been used in lots of TV series and films - if you are interested you can read about it on their website here  and there is info about the estate on wikepedia.

Inside the garden

The garden is divided by a great 'diaphragm' wall which increased the area availble for trained fruit trees. I hope this gives you an idea of how vast it is.

Through the gap

This is taken from the great glass conservatory looking through the gap in the 'diaphragm' wall to the far gate.

The Mackenzie & Moncur conservatory

This has been wrapped in plastic to try to stop it deteriating any further.

I will definitely be sharing more photographs of this wonderful place with you. I am actually more interested in making more abstract, graphic images, but I thought I'd start with a taster of the whole garden.
(No guarantee on the accuracy of my historic information)