Brooklynbummel

On the first rainless day in a while, enjoyed exploring the Brooklyn Botanical Garden's "Power of Trees" exhibit with (a few) students from "Religion of Trees." Since I first came to see it three months ago, 

they've dissected a pin oak they had to take down and - unrelated to the trees show - installed several shiny metal "lotuses" designed by Jean-Michel Othoniel. Our jury was out on how the golden ones fit 

into the Japanese garden, despite the artist's pablum about the lotus flower "symboliz[ing] spirituality, rebirth, enlightenment, and the sacred." Lotuses rise from murk, not mirrors. But the big chrome ones

in the shallow pools where water lilies are cultivated, managed to achieve a different more mirroring religious point, evoking Indra's Net in their nested reflections of reflections of reflections: cool!

Since I was in the neighborhood I also popped into the Brooklyn Museum and was moved by the new exhibition of work by Santería-inspired María Magdalena Campos-Pons ("Finding Balance," above),

wowed by the spectacular soon-to-close "Africa Fashion," an experience of the effervescent joy of decolonization and embodiment, and wound up in the reopened Asian galleries. Whew!

Botanic bliss

Another picture from the BBG, whose gardeners are such artists!

Trees as community hosts

Went back to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden today, after much too long a hiatus. (The last time may have been Aug 20, 2019!) Lovely to see what they've done, plotting a meandering brook across its center, with serpentining paths disclosing verdant spaces intimate and grand. My reason for going was "Power of Trees," a series they've just kicked off, which encompasses special signage, events, and six site-specific artworks designed by members of the AnkhLave Arts Alliance to the theme "Branching Out: Trees as Community Hosts." Three of these particularly captivated me.

The one above, Jasmine Murrell's "Fingertips that Touch the Stars," in a little island between meanders, pays tribute to the all the hands that sculpted the land, from stars to ancestors. (The mirrors give it a depth and lightness a photo can't capture.) She observes: The most important thing to learn from trees is that nothing is done alone.

Seema Lisa Pandya's "Seed of Potential" invites you to enter the casing from which a seed has broken forth. As you approach you find it inscribed with values of care: mindfulness, emergence, creativity, respect, menstrual reverence, community, laughter, love, peace, vibrancy, cosmic awe, TEK (traditional ecological knowledge), equity, kindness, storytelling, togetherness. The seed has more...

Natsuki Takauji explains her "The Heart of the Tree": personification of nature is fundamental in Japanese mythology and Shintoism; I grew up interpreting trees as spirits, gods, shelter, or even myself, a human. The piece was watched over by a bird, which hopped around to keep an eye on me as I circled it.

I'd like to bring the fall "Religion of Trees" class here. These works about the cultural or spiritual significance of trees (another celebrates the Peruvian tradition of yunza, where a tree is festooned with gifts then festively cut down) are in a fascinating dialogue with the majestic and reverently tended trees surrounding us. 

Botanic

 

 

 
Fort Tryon Park makes it a little easier to be so far from the BBG

Bustling borough

Moving to Manhattan doesn't mean we won't miss bountiful Brooklyn

Late summer late afternoon

Having the Brooklyn Botanic Garden a short walk away is something we know we'll miss as we move Manhattanward. What new gardens await?

Summer pinks and purples

 

Coming to a garden near you

Spring is firing on all cylinders at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Fern people gathering

Where to look?

Spring's an exponential thing, all of a sudden it's happening everywhere.

It begins