The Late Show Gardens - Future Feast ...Hope and Inspiration

Future Feast in The Garden of Flow/Accumulation

Suzanne Biaggi and Patrick Picard

The Late Show Gardens - September 2009






Under Construction.....

The Biaggi/Picard design focused upon the cycles of nature, or Flow,

& Accumulation - interpreted as man's interruption of nature's rhythms.

The garden utilized watering systems that were meant to offer solutions to the results of accumulation.

Photos copyright © Alice Joyce

The alluring feast spread out upon the commodious table represents hope.

Charred saplings are featured among the garden's objects/symbols.

An intriguing garden to wander through.

Among Suzanne's inspirations? The mannerist gardens of Italy!

Photos © Alice Joyce

'Future Feast' may remain as a permanent installation at Cornerstone Sonoma, 

when The Late Show Gardens concludes.

Must wait and see......

Picard's expertise encompasses the garden's permaculture plantings .

Biaggi talked with me about how permaculture 

needn't always be rustic, as people might conjure it.

Shadows often bring another element to a design, as with a sculpture in an outdoor setting

 (or indoors with special lighting). 

In this instance, the repetition of the black saplings adds drama.

Can you feel the intensity of the sun on a late-summer day in Sonoma?

The Late Show Gardens - Visual Impact

Resting Dragon by Stephen Glassman

The site-specific installation arises from a grassy expanse in John Greenlee's 

Mediterranean Meadow Garden.

Materials: Planed and stained, and natural bamboo; stone; gambions.

After the Fall

....a sculptural installation by sculptor and award-winning landscape architect, Jack Chandler.

Chandler breaks new ground at The Late Show Gardens, moving away from the picturesque, contemporary settings designed by the firm of Chandler & Chandler.

Chandler pulls no punches here, offering up a design "not drenched in fantasy, but ...the reality of a world warmed and polluted by our own hands."

The artist, Simple's lighthearted creation made from harvested grasses.

Simple's Horticultural Art Gallery is located in Douglasville, PA.

Succulents & Stone 

Complementary and contrasting - shapes, textures and alluring color:

Displays from Artefact Design & Salvage, 

on the grounds of Cornerstone Sonoma.

The Late Show Gardens ... The Hermit's Garden

The Hermit's Garden .....at The Late Show Gardens

Designers: Kate Frey and Ben Frey

Kate Frey is known for her long stint as the garden director/designer of the lovely Bonterra Gardens - edible, ornamental and habitat - at Fetzer Vineyards, alas, now closed.

To my knowledge, Kate is a rare U.S. designer, having won medals, including 

a Gold Medal for her designs at London's Chelsea Flower Show.

Kate has worked recently with Ben Frey, her husband and owner of Rustic Towers. 

Ben "rescues" wood, bringing it back to life as eye-catching garden towers, furniture, buildings, gates, and other constructions both useful and playful. 

In The Hermit's Garden, the designers create a cautionary narrative.

Their artist's statement presents the image of "man striding from a pastoral, rustic past into an unreflective future where destruction of the environment occurs around him."

Detail from the figure pictured above.

"...the unquenchable desire of the masses for more of everything the earth has to offer has drained the land of water and life. The hermit cannot avoid the momentum of his shared destiny...."

While the garden's delightful aspects draw the viewer in,

I see the design as positing a future that will be bleak 

unless we collectively reassess and change direction.

The Late Show Gardens ... An Elegant Entryway

This page is UNDER CONSTRUCTION ...

Renewal

Designed by Gary Ratway and Mike Lucas

Entryway to... The Late Show Gardens

Massive, crushed gasoline tanks - the ultimate discarded salvage material - emerge as components in the show's elegant entryway design. The designers transform propane tank end cuts into shapely planters filled with billowy grasses.

The grid-like arrangement creates a calculated repetition that effectively

guides visitors at the entrance to the show.

Aligned in a soothing linear pattern, spheres of clipped box give rise to exuberant grasses, flowering perennials, and languid vines.

I loved this thoughtful, sophisticated design that so inventively combines the harsh material of rusted steel with the gem-like emerald green shrubs, and  thesoft hues and blousy textures of the grasses. 

Moving beyond beauty, the designers' statement speaks to the planting of "masses of grasses (in the crushed tanks) which bio-remediate contaminated soils." 

Their "fusion of high design and principals of sustainability,"

a complete success from my point of view!

The Late Show Gardens ... Innovative Design

This page is UNDER CONSTRUCTION ...

A Gala Evening Event ushered in The Late Show Gardens,

Taking Place in Wine Country at Cornerstone Sonoma, September 18, 19 & 20

Here's a Preview! 

The Grow Melt Project

Designers: Peter Good, Liz Einwiller, Adam Greenspan, Sarah Kuehl and David Fong

Calling attention to climate change, the garden features an austere yet sublime

 wall of glittering ice; its melting form generating a pool of water 

during the duration of the show.

As the sun set during the preview event, an opening appeared,  signaling the onset of the ice wall's conversion to water.

I'm returning to the Show today, where temperatures are expected to reach 90 degrees.

Moments after completion of the wall's construction, 

Peter Good attends to the garden's faceted stepping stones.

The Late Show Gardens - September in Sonoma

Ginkoweb

Photos Courtesy of the Artist,

Stephen Glassman

The Late Show Gardens at Cornerstone Sonoma

This show took place September 18, 19 & 20, 2009.

Contemplative and confrontational, words used to describe White Tail Plaza in Los Angeles, a recently completed project by Stephen Glassman.

I'm excitedly looking forward to seeing one of Glassman's sculptural installations in-person at The Late Show Gardens event, to be held in September at Cornerstone Sonoma.

In talking with Glassman about his process and about working with bamboo, he mentions how "everything comes from drawing... drawing is free from gravity... it's all about the relationship between control and accident. Bamboo allows me to do that on a large architectural scale."

In addition to work created in his studio, and exhibited in galleries, Glassman has always worked on the street. In the early 1990s, he created large-scale freeform structural bamboo installations in devastated urban sites around Los Angeles, following the Rodney King Riots, Malibu Fires and Northridge Quake.

These lyrical works emerged as symbols of resiliency. More about Glassman's public projects & collaborations at: stephenglassmanstudio.net

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