11 | a field guide: five gardens to visit Tucson, AZ
Every time I go Hiking, I wish I knew more about the plants that I am looking at. If you feel ths same - here are five amazing gardens\living museums to start with. The list includes Botanic Gardens and National Monuments, some are inside the city limits, and one (the Sonoran Desert Museum is just a spectacular drive away from the city) through the North Tucson Mountains. Make sure to add time for stopping along the way.
The Arizona Desert Museum is inside of the Saguaro National Forest, It is a great place to take a date, friends or families to look at plants and animals up close and personal without worrying about packing water and all of the gear needed for a hike in the Desert. Although it is best to have a hat, sunscreen and water with you at all times. The sun is particularly intense in Southern AZ.. The plant collections are incredible. I like going through the hummingbird house and the bird aviary. Gambel Quail are on the ground - it’s so cool to hear them burbling in the undergrowth.
Saguaro National Forest - West Side
The Tucson Botanical Garden is a quiet place to spend late afternoon watching the color changes and birds and insects floating through the pollinator gardens. They have a gorgeous butterfly and orchid pavilion. The plant collection is well maintained - my favorite area is the Cactus and Succulent garden and the citrus grove in the winter. The smell of lemon and orange blossoms are intoxicating.
Entrance buildings at The Tucson Botanical Garden
The Mission Garden is a living agricultural museum. It has recreated gardens based on all of the peoples who have lived and moved through the Sonoran Desert and Tucson. It is a great resource for questions about food culture, history and native plants. They host an annual Agave Festival in the Fall, with demonstrations of food and drinks that come from the great agave.
The Mission garden sells a ‘Mission Black Fig’ tree. Mission instagram
Tohono Chul is a 37 acre botanic garden with a nursery, gift shop and bistro. They have music in the gardens with world class musicians. The nature trail walk goes through mature saguaros. I have never seen the great horned owl pictured below, but wouldn’t that be thrilling?
You may get lucky and see a great horned owl at Tohono Chul. Tohono Chul
10 | a book + links
recommended reading
via Clarkson Potter/Random House
Choosing and living with hand made or design objects can be daunting, but if you follow your intuition and allow yourself to have fun, you can become a thoughtful supporter of makers and designers everywhere while enriching your life. Reframing the purchase of something significant from the burden of owning it forever also helps, I have certain things that I could never part with, but there are other objects or artwork that will pass through my hands and space. Museum shops are a great place to start looking at art, jewelry and objects - and from there, small boutiques, galleries, antique markets and estate sales are so much fun.
The duo behind the Design blog Sight Unseen just released a book called How to live with Objects . The NYT reviewed this book and highlights their ability to identify upcoming trends. In defining their style… “It’s really ineffable in some ways, and it’s come back to us, when people say things are ‘so Sight Unseen,’” Ms. Singer said. “It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. There is just some weird, undefinable quality that’s hard to explain.” In Ms. Khemsurov’s estimation, “It’s just interesting enough, but not too crazy.” Their website is filled with fascinating insights on design and trends. I loved reading this post on What it’s like living in a Schindler house.
A few SW places and websites that I love to frequent
one way of reusing cloth with Christina Kim of Dosa Flying Fish
09 Field Guide | old city, Philadelphia
A field guide to old city, Philadelphia PA
Philadelphia | neighborhood guide to old city.
Quiet in the land image by Marley Parsons
I returned to Phialdephia for an exhibition of drawings at Gallery Land Collective. ( On view through November 30.)
Old City is one of my favorite neighborhoods in town. I highly recommend a visit to this part of the city, It is always evolving. It is part of Philadelphia’s historic district, and it spans from Vine Street to Walnut Street, north to south, and from 7th Street to the Delaware River, west to east.
The material culture down here is so unique, and typical of the earliest East Coast cities. Brick, granite, marble, slate, terracotta, cast iron utility covers, and single pane windows. A painter friend picked up paint chips from the buildings to create a color palette. The historic heart of Philadelphia resides along Independence Mall. Home to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center, the Mall also boasts a number of cultural institutions including the Philosophical Society Library and Archives, The National Jewish American Museum , and Ben Franklin’s house. Be sure to stop by the Independence Visitors Center for tickets to city attractions and helpful information.
Shoppers can find lots to love along Second and Third Street, I love how there are hardware stores and an abrasive supply shop tucked in between cafes and galleries. Here are a few of my favorite places to check out.
sidewalks and building materials
Shops
Vagabond Boutique: A cool boutique that has understated leather goods, clothing, jewelry and more.
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Hand Tasting room and home bar supply - also great graphic tees.
Claudia Mills: So fun to see a bunch of looms set up in the showroom.
Sugarcube: Updated classics by indie designers & the shop's private label, showcased in an industrial loft. The coolest clothing and accessories.
United by Blue: I have heard good thingsm, about this one, but haven’t gotten there yet.
Christ Church on Second Street has a dog park next to it, and benches all around to take in the city.
Galleries and Design Studios
Antique tools for cultivation. David Rubin and Land Collective
Larry Becker Contemporary: Represents and exhibits abstract and conceptual contemporary art in various mediums, with an emphasis on painting. Emerging, mid-career, and internationally recognized artists, many Philadelphia-based.
Center for Art in Wood: contemporary collection of functional and sculptural wood.
Muse Gallery: In a city of firsts, Muse is the oldest cooperative art gallery in Philly; 52 N. 2nd St. Monthly rotating exhibitions by members
Land Collective: David Rubin and Land Collective are a landscape architecture and planning firm. David’s personal collection of garden tools and objects are well displayed. They have an open studio every First Friday and host art exhibitions in the lobby.
Food + Drink
Cafe ole: The Best Mediterranean mezze plates, sandwiches and salads. Don’t miss the hummus.
Tomo Sushi and Ramen: I stopped in for a quick avocado roll and it hit the spot!
Old City Coffee: When you need a simple cup of joe, it’s right behind Christ Church, so head towards one of the benches and regroup.
Fork Restaurant and Bar: You have to cross Market Street to find the bars, and there are plenty on Second Street, I prefer Fork. The bar is in the center of the restaurant - made of cast concrete (the old fashioned comes highly recommended on a dark and rainy night).
This is just scratching the surface of what is available in this diverse neighborhood. Please let me know your favorites in the comments below.
08 | Ellsworth Kelly | Kindred Aesthetics
Ellsworth Kelly Curve XXI, 1978-1980
Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh, NY in 1923. Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and print-maker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, color and form. Art critic for the Gaurdian, Adrian Searle writes, “Like many great colourists, Kelly was as interested in black and white as the harmonies and dissonance of high-keyed hues, in meeting points, edges and limits as much as spread and optical radiance and saturation of the colour field. Often, the canvases and panels were shaped like sections of ellipses, arcs, diagonals and curves. There were wedges and odd rhomboids that looked as though they were obeying an impossible perspective. Your eye could follow a curve and be sent off on some unexpected parabola before being halted with a jolt. His art was full of energy and stillness and unexpected meetings. How human the abstract is.
All this gave his art a wonderfully understated eccentricity, even though it was always reigned in by a feeling for rightness, which is a quality more easily sensed than explained. Throughout his career Kelly drew, with a lovely sparse line and feel for a shape’s placement on the empty sheet of paper. A great foil to his paintings, these outline drawings of lily leaves, lemons, vines, fig and briar felt like they had grown as nature does, without any contrivance. In all his art there is no apparent struggle, just a feeling of arrival.”
I recently visited the San Francisco MOCA where I saw some gorgeous Ellsworth Kelly wall panels and paintings. I was struck by their clean gesture and simplicity of form. It reminded me of a film to share with you. The Shaker practice and aesthetics have had a profound influence on generations of artists. This short documentary of Kelly and photographer Jack Shear discusses their visits to the Mount Lebanon, New York Shaker village - and on their views of the architecture and design as well as their personal collection of furniture and artistic responses. It is available on demand on Amazon or Vimeo.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/shakervillage
https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/Ellsworth_Kelly/?sa=1
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/28/ellsworth-kelly-abstract-artist
07 | Friday links
Check out the posthumously published journal by Anne Truitt. Her work and writing have been a touchstone for many.
Lily Stockman Gavlak Los Angeles Covey, 2016 Oil on linen 62 x 50 inches
Conversations about art with Heidi Zuckerman is an amazing podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conversations-about-art/id1493074491 Three recent favorites are #6o with Alia Ali #77 | With Lily Stockman (painting above) and #91 with Teresita Fernandez
Bonnie Lynch: Small Shell Vessel Saggar Fired Clay 8” x 13” x 11” 2022 Photo: Penina Meisels
Click on the images for links to artists Bonnie Lynch and Linda Lynch who will be showing in the studio from October - December 2022
Linda Lynch Prow Drawing, II (from Ryder), Pastel pigment on cotton paper, 22 1/4 x 30 inches, 2021
Santa Fe Modern: Contemporary Design in the High Desert
by Helen Thompson, photographs by Casey Dunn
The Monacelli Press, November 2021
Hardcover | 8 x 10 inches | 240 pages | English | ISBN: 9781580935616 | $50.00
PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
Santa Fe Modern reveals the high desert landscape as an ideal setting for bold, abstracted forms of modernist houses. Wide swaths of glass, deep-set portals, long porches, and courtyards allow vistas, color, and light to become integral parts of the very being of a house, emboldening a way to experience a personal connection to the desert landscape. The architects featured draw from the New Mexican architectural heritage–they use ancient materials such as adobe in combination with steel and glass, and they apply this language to the proportions and demands exacted by today’s world. The houses they have designed are confident examples of architecture that is particular to the New Mexico landscape and climate, and yet simultaneously evoke the rigorous expressions of modernism. The vigor and the allure of modern art and architecture hearten each other in a way that is visible and exciting, and this book demonstrates the synergistic relationship between art, architecture, and the land.
Helen Thompson is a nationally known writer on interior design and architecture. Formerly a food writer and editor for Texas Monthly, she [...] is also the author of Marfa Modern and Texas Made, Texas Modern [...] as well as The Big Texas Steakhouse Cookbook, and The Mansion on Turtle Creek Cookbook. She lives in Santa Fe. Casey Dunn is an Austin-based architectural and landscape photographer [...] He is the photographer for Marfa Modern, Texas Made, Texas Modern, and Oasis.
Bonnie and Linda Lynch’s houses are featured in Santa Fe Modern
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-10-21/santa-fe-modern-book-new-mexico-city-has-best-modern-architecture