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Blog: Sleevage

sleevage.com

If you’re like us, you’re still recovering from the holidays-  so here’s a few of our picks guaranteed to put pep back in your in your step. Sleevage is a blog all about music cover art. From the LP’s of the 60’s to the digital artworks of now.

ArtBabble Video: Photography: The Wet Collodion Process

Invented in 1851, the wet collodion photographic process produced a glass negative and a beautifully detailed print. Preferred for the quality of the prints and the ease with which they could be reproduced, the new method thrived from the 1850s until about 1880.

IMA Work of Art:

New Year's Shooter by Luks, George Benjamin

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imamuseum: So You Think You Can Blog? We’re searching for a new blogger and it could be you. http://bit.ly/79BPe4

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The IMA is searching for its next blogger and we want you! Interested in sharing your thoughts about the IMA from an “outsider’s” perspective? Not afraid to muse publicly about the museum’s programs and exhibitions? Able to attend IMA events and willing to submit 300-600 words once a month? Then you could be the blogger for the job.

Here’s how it works:*

Step 1: Email your responses to the question below to web@imamuseum.org.  Be sure to include “Hey IMA – I Wanna Blog” in the subject line.

Name:
Email:
Tell us a little about yourself:
Tell us a story. We want to know how good your yarn-spinning skills are, so give your best anecdote involving an experience you’ve had at the museum.
Why should you be an IMA blogger?

Step 2: We’ll select the top finalists and post their responses to the IMA blog during the month of January.

Step 3: In February, we’ll take it to America for a vote. Yep, that’s right! We’re gonna let the  IMA blog’s readers decide who they want to read.

Step 4: The new IMA blogger is crowned. (and, yes, if you will wear it, we will give you an actual crown.) He or she will receive a dual membership to the IMA (so you can bring a friend whenever you want), two complimentary tickets to select public programs during 2010, and a monthly opportunity to blog.

*Rules and restrictions may apply. We just haven’t written them yet nor sent them to our lawyers.

KINDA BIG ANNOUNCEMENT #2: @IMAMUSEUM

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The IMA will launch on Twitter on January 1, 2010. @imamuseum will be a resource for breaking news, IMA factoids, museum musings, and more. In addition to a way for us to communicate with you, we hope you will use it as a direct link to the IMA – Don’t be shy…We want you to feel  free to DM, RT or @ us anytime.

Oh, and even though we’re not starting until January 1, you can go ahead and FOLLOW US NOW!

Being the nature woman she is, there is also a wide variety of natives for sun and shade. For those more in to garden rooms than gardens, there’s a wide range of non-plant garden related items as well (I’m a big fan of the battery operated paper lanterns). But since I get to write this blog, I’m going to concentrate on plants-  particularly the ones I like best.While the perennials will be available all season long (April – October), remember, some plants may be in short supply so members get here Friday, it’s your day. For everyone else, all I can do is suggest you become an IMA member right quick or get here early in the week-end. It’s not my fault if all the Actea/Cimicifuga simplex ‘Black Negligee’ is gone. Actually the Greenhouse gets in new plants fairly often through May and June so more may come in. Or they may not.

Looking over the perennials available, I did a quick design in my head using three plants that like sun to light shade – Heuchera ‘Tiramisu’ (coralbell/alumroot) Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Leprechaun Gold’ (columbine), and Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ (spurge).

The thing that ties all these together is foliage. Keep in mind most perennials bloom for a month or two so foliage is very important as it’s around 7 or 8 months.
Heuchera ‘Tiramisu’ is one of the new H. villosa hybrids. The infusion of H. villosa gives us a much hardier plant and usually a much larger plant. It’s not so fussy about soil or our hot humid summers followed by vicious winters. ‘Tiramisu’ is chartreuse (Mmmm, chartreuse) and red in spring with the red changing to amber in summer then back to red in fall.

I’m going to have to watch it in my own garden to know the time-table on this color change as the information varies with the source. Pink flowers, as if I care. H. ‘Miracle’ would give the same effect if all the ‘Tiramisu’ is gone.
Aquilegia ‘Leprechaun Gold’ has gold and green variegated foliage with violet flowers. It’s nice to have the flowers but again it’s the foliage that counts, deep blue-green with gold splotches and specks.

Euphorbia ‘Fireglow’ has nice coppery green foliage in spring with a bright coral midrib.

In summer the leaves will be a deep green with red stems. But to be honest, while the foliage caught my eye, I want this one for the flowers as much as anything. Multiple sources call them orange-fuchsia. That color makes it a “must have” for me.  As with most Euphorbias, it’s the bracts- not the actual flowers- that provide the most color. So with these plants you have the red in the Heuchera picking up the red in the Euphorbia, the Chartreuse in the Heuchera picking up the yellow in the columbine, and the dark green of the Euphorbia picking up the dark green in the columbine.

Another plant that would be a good addition to this little collection would be Heuchera ‘Citronelle’, a pure chartreuse (Mmmm, more chartreuse) coralbell also with H. villosa genes. Since you can never have too much chartreuse I’ll also mention Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ (Mmmm, even more chartreuse, on Sutphin Mall) and Tricyrtus ‘Heaven’s Gate’.  Keeping with the color theme is Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, Hakone grass, Perennial Plant Association Plant of the Year. This is a plant that is always in my top picks for gardens and containers. It’s beautiful, absolutely flows in a design, and is very hardy.

I think the redbuds being offered will sell out real fast. Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ has purple leaves with darker than normal flowers while Lavender Twist™ is a lovely strongly weeping form with the usual lavender pink flowers. Both can be found in the gardens at the IMA, ‘Forest Pansy’ near the Garden for Everyone and Lavender Twist™ as you exit Deer Zink into the Overlook. Also available is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ which grows in large masses outside the 40th Street entrance.

I have to mention the annuals and tropicals even if the event is called Perennial Premiere. You will have to keep these indoors or move them in and out according to temperatures. Again, some of these can sell out. Being a big fan of the bananas I was glad to see the virus tested Musa bajoo, a hardy species, will be available. I planted one of these at home last year and it got 8-10 feet tall with about a half dozen pups. Unfortunately I mulched it really late so it may not come back. For those that don’t mind things a little prickly there is the Agave bovicornuta ‘Reggae Time’, a cultivar of cow’s horn agave (bovi=bovine=cow, cornuta=horn). A large assortment of succulents will be available as these are still trending very hot. And of course we have many coleus, begonias, and flowering tender plants.

The hours for Perennial Premiere are Friday 11am – 5pm, Saturday 11am – 5 pm, and Sunday 12 noon – 5 pm. Those are just the regular hours the greenhouse is open every week (actually next week they will return to the 11am – 8pm schedule on Fridays). This week-end, all the Horticulturists will be working in the greenhouse along with the regular staff to help you make wise selections. Please join us for three special days of plant shopping and fun. Since some of you all may be unfamiliar with this concept of shopping and fun I strongly recommend you watch this important video before traveling to the IMA Greenhouse (be sure to catch the Spring Blossom Festival).

They didn’t design the accompanying clouds you see here, but what if they could have?

by Theater of Inclusion

Fellow IMA blogger Ed Bachta recently told me about a new film called Owning the Weather.  Premiering last week at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the film tells the story of weather modification science.  The film features “seeders,” scientists who inject clouds with substances that hasten condensation, thereby making rain.  The doc also gives voice to philosophers on both sides of the debate about whether weather interventions are a handy solution to the global warming blues…or a sacrilegious crossing of the line between human and god.We can’t help but ask how long it will take some meteorologically-inclined contemporary artist to whip up a blizzard at the next Venice Biennale.  It could happen…

How about designer plants and animals?  It’s being done.  As physicist Freeman Dyson writes, every orchid, rose and lizard is the work of a skilled breeder.  The designers whose work is on view in the IMA’s current European Design: Shaping the New Century exhibition offer mind-blowing conceptions of chairs, lamps, etc.  Future design exhibitions may include the latest microbe, engineered to feed on plastic: an innovative design solution to the problem of reducing that gargantuan mass of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean.

Or, Dyson notes, Open Source biology may allow artists (or even third graders) to design their own genomes.  This is the premise of video games like Spore (whose designer we’ve been trying to invite to the IMA to give a talk).

As designer Bruce Mau asked in the exhibition Massive Change: “Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

For now, I am going to keep it simple and join the international Cloud Appreciation Society.  I’m no sculptor but know how to savor a fine cumulonimbus, authored by no one that I know of.