No comments about Gardens of the French Riviera.

1 comments about Dancing in the Landscape : The Sculpture of Athena Tacha.

1. DANCING IN THE LANDSCAPE

   Athena Tacha's belief that art should be enjoyed by everyone has led to the creation of over thirty public sculptures in twenty-five years. Nearly all of them, from Alaska to Florida and New York to Arizona, are reproduced full-page in the book "Dancing in the Landscape:the Sculpture of Athena Tacha" - the second book on the artist to appear in the last couple of years ("Cosmic Rhythms: Athena Tacha's Public Sculpture", 1999, is equally inclusive but stresses more her biography and early work). Tacha's lucid documentation of her executed sculptures, as well as of fifty "finalist's proposals" for other competitions, accompany over 200 color illustrations.

   As a pioneer of "site specific" sculpture in the 1970's, Tacha completed her first two public works in Ohio: Oberlin, where she taught sculpture at Oberlin College, and downtown Cleveland. Other commissions followed quickly. Most of them resulted from winning competitions, and she is as candid when she writes about losing a competition as when she wins. Few proposals were made in the abstract. Nearly always, Tacha's consideration of the site and its use is the impetus for the design.

   "Connections", commissioned for the City of Philadelphia in 1981 and completed in 1992, is, I believe, an ideal manifestation of her art. Probably one of the first parks designed as an environmental sculpture, it covers an entire city block. Tacha writes, "I modeled the land through terraced planters, while coloring and texturing it with flowering ground-covers, trees and rocks." Various neighborhoods surround the park and Tacha's goal was to connect them with a "park that will offer a quiet atmosphere for relaxing, picnicking, jogging and playing. More than that, I hope it will offer a magical and healing environment within the stressful fabric of an inner city."

   The book is divided into sections, one for each category of her large, creative production: Waterfronts, Parks and Plazas, Steps and Pathways, Waterfalls and Fountains, Mazes, Arcades and Colonnades, Memorials. We, the public, are participants in Tacha's sculptures. We can walk around them, sit on them, or wander through them. In doing so, the sculptures may obfuscate our sense of time, space and gravity. And although the book doesn't say this, the sculptures are fun. From personal experience I can say that Tacha's public art has given me more pleasure than any marble politician on a plinth or bronze hero on a horse.

   Harriet Senie's essay introduces the reader to Tacha's background and the evolution of her work. Senie also addresses the tragedy of the lack of care and destruction of public art. Some of Tacha's thoughtfully conceived, carefully constructed work has been damaged or completely destroyed. This reason alone makes the book an invaluable record of her public art.

   In an interview with Glenn Harper, Tacha explains what her work means to her: "I always want to get away from typical art that goes in museums and collections. That's why I do public art, to escape the consumerism and contextualization of art. It goes against the grain to follow Duchamp's principle that whatever you put in a museum is art. To me, it has to be made or intended as art. I don't care if people call my work art, but I make it to communicate something."

   Harper's interview is of special interest because it dwells on Tacha's private art. There have been only a few exhibitions of these small and personal sculptures created from ingredients as unexpected as the works themselves: abalone shells, wine corks, feathers, discarded thread, pine cones, broken glass from automobile accidents, and expanded sprayed foam found in a London construction gondola. The small but lovely reproductions in the interview show us what has emerged from this motley assortment: helmets, armor, masks and shields stemming from reality and ending in the realm of fantasy.

   They are at once ironic and ambiguous: in Double Sided-Shield for Ellen, Tacha explains, "the abalone shells are stuck on window screening, so it is a flexible shield, and the back is coated with broken glass from automobile accidents. It is both scratchy when you hold it, and it can't protect you because it's floppy. Again it pursues the built-in contradictions of these works." Many of these small pieces are dedicated to dear friends who have died from cancer. They are little memorials to "the vulnerability of the human body that nothing can protect."

   If nothing else, the private sculpture reveals the cosmic scope of Tacha's irrepressible imagination. But more than that, it tells us a lot about the depth of her feelings, her caring for friends, and allows us glimpses into the secret places in her mind. Although this is a small portion of the book, it tells us a great deal about the woman who creates the public sculpture and whose verbal gift crystallizes her ideas here in Dancing in the Landscape.

   In spite of its small print (its only fault), this handsomely illustrated and designed volume is a highly fascinating and informative reference for students, teachers, landscape architects, historians and anyone interested in today's environment.

   Elizabeth McClelland

2 comments about Architecture in Detail: Colors (Architecture in Detail).

1. Unfortunatelly I have never received this book.
   What has happened with the shipment?
   My address is:
   FASTWEB, Ana Paula Calle
   Via Paolo Veronese 252
   10148, Torino
   Italy



2. The third volume in the "Architecture in Detail" series, Colors: Architecture in Detail explores the work of top architects and interior designers working today. Especially focusing on the form/color duality, Colors is filled cover to cover with beautiful photographs illustrating rooms and exteriors based around the impact of various colors: white, black, red, blue, yellow, brown, gray, green, and polychrome. Paragraph highlights draw attention to specific details, but the majority of Colors focuses squarely upon the almost dreamlike images themselves. A truly captivating volume simply to page through.

1 comments about Salvage Style for the Garden: Simple Outdoor Projects Using Reclaimed Treasures.

1. I'm always looking for more accessories for my gardens, but I don't like my garden looking like a display for the local garden centers, so I was excited to see the interesting new Marcianne Miller book, Salvage Style for the Garden. I was inspired to create more than one of the projects in this book, and it also helped me think more creatively when I looked at some of the things I already had laying around in the shed.
   
   This book has projects that will please the most sophisticated gardener, as well as projects for gardeners who like a more primitive or country look. Miller and Irwin have an original and creative sense of style and many of the projects in this book are very different from the standard copycat projects everyone else seems to have. Planters, benches, trellises and projects that are just plain fun fill the book.
   
   As the book progresses, you will see some of my favorite projects, such as a huge pinwheel, which I am very excited about making for my children's garden. You will learn step by step techniques for creating garden ornamentation like a glass hanging planter or a window leg table from pieces that you can find in your local salvage yard or pieces you may even have in your own cellar.
   
   All in all, there are over forty ideas with step by step instructions. There are also many more ideas to inspire you to create you own garden art and structures in the galleries of additional ideas.
   
   The best thing about this book is that it is not just a pattern book for making projects. It is also set up to teach you to look for and use salvage to create your own unique pieces. It is well written, crammed with ideas, and fun to read. The pleasure these women feel when they create a new ornament for their gardens comes through very clearly in this book.

1 comments about The Ultimate Garden Planner: The Definitive Guide to Designing and Planting a Beautiful Garden.

1. This book's title says it all. Peter McHoy wrote the book (in fact, he has written numerous books) on gardening, but The Ultimate Garden Planner tops the list. Whether you want water features, a rock garden, a formal or an informal garden, or a wildlife-attracting haven, here is your one-stop, step-by-step planner.

   Large color plates on every page illustrate a compendium of outdoor features. McHoy incorporates planting diagrams, cross-section views, and numbered instructions with plant identification.

   The result gives novice and veteran gardeners alike hundreds of choices to adopt outright or adapt for your own particular terrain and needs.

   Two green thumbs up!

No comments about Ancient Roman Villa Gardens (Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium Series in the History of Landscape Architecture).

No comments about Setting and Stray Paths: Writings on Landscape Architecture.

1 comments about New Classic Gardens (Royal Horticultural Society).

1. In New Classic Gardens, expert gardener and horticulturalist Jill Billington presents a dynamic, practical, and effective approach to gardening that effectively reinterprets traditional formal designs in a way that is accommodating to small-scale outdoor rooms. The wealth of accessible information for permanent planting, quick design effects, organizing gardens for minimum maintenance with a spectrum of plants ranging from small clippables to large-scale exotics is artfully enhanced with full color photography that is as inspiring as they are informative. If you have a limited space for a garden, begin your horticultural planning by reading Jill Billington's New Classic Gardens!

No comments about The Tudor House and Garden: Architecture and Landscape in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Studies in British Art).

No comments about The Weekend Gardener: All You Need to Plan and Make a Good-Looking, Low-Maintenance and Fast-Maturing Garden.