Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

By far, my favorite season of the year at the IMA is fall.  Currently we’re right into the series of weeks where the grounds transform into this amazing color palette of reds, oranges and yellows.  I happen to start working for the IMA late September three years ago, just in time to experience the magnificence and get hooked.

Indianapolis Museum of Art Garden, Pony Bridge; contributed by Terry.Tyson

I’m not the only one captured by the seasons, as shown by the IMA Flickr Group.  As of this writing we have over 200 members and we are pushing dangerously close to 2000 images!  It’s wonderful to see the many vantage points brought together to a single point on the web.

Here’s a few photos I captured three years ago shortly after starting at the IMA.  They are not altered in any way.  I always revel in these photos and tell people about them.  So I am taking my opportunity now to share them with you.

Grab the extinguisher. This tree's on fire!

Check out the latest additions to the Flickr group and please join us by sharing your fall photos as well.

Probably the most satisfying aspect of working as a gardener at the IMA is to be present at the intersection of art and nature.  Not just being able to cruise the galleries indoors, or seeing some sculpture in the gardens; but bit by bit creating new art experiences – at least in my head.  And that is where art starts forming, as the mind combines the previously unrelated.

Ooooo, the blog is getting a little too deep and self-consciously artsy.

Who said something about art being either plagiarism or genius?  In the horticulture trade, one of the first things a gardener learns is to borrow and adapt what others do. A good gardener  gives proper credit when told, “That is a nice plant combination.”  So, John Teramoto, Marty Krause, Annette Schlagenhauff (am I forgetting anyone?) – thank you for the exhibit Lay of the Land.

The exhibit combining Asian and Western art prints and poetry, set me to thinking about how often images in the galleries, or music and poetry cause me to recall some beautiful place I’ve experienced.  Nice memories and feelings …. trying to capture the bliss of the moment.

So as Autumn brings another season to a close, I offer some images and poems, with apologies to the artists,  that reminded this gardener of the promise and beauty of Spring as compensation for labors…

Work
The corn is baking in blue smoke,
Pickled tomato is piled ready on my plate,
And the chrysocolla of a young cedar branch is close.
Yet the breakfast that should be calm and enjoyable
makes me uneasy.
I’m worried about the manure I threw yesterday
From the horsecart and left on the slope.
Kenji Miyazawa 1896-1933

Manure and compost on vegetable garden at Oldfields

Read the rest of this entry »