Chloe squared [ shot by @ohseephotography ]

Herbert Bayer, The Marble Garden, Aspen Meadows Hotel Development, Aspen, Colorado, 1955

Las Pozas sculpture garden | Xilitla, Mexico

In the 1960s and 1970s, Edward James dedicated more and more of his resources to his “Surrealist Xanadu,” as he referred to it, spending millions of dollars and employing hundreds of masons, artisans, and local craftsmen. By the times James died in 1984, he had built 36 Surrealist-inspired concrete sculptures spread out over more than 20 acres of a tropical jungle.

Today’s my birthday ʕ♡˙ᴥ˙♡ʔ🥂💓🫂

Buy me a drink ☆

Pay for next week’s yoga class ☆

Niki de Saint Phalle, Il Giardino dei Tarocchi (Tarot Garden), Pescia Fiorentina | Capalbio, Itlay, 1979-1988 VS Patrick Tuttofuoco, Pininfarina Architecture and Maddalena d’Alfonso, MAN, Nuoro, Italy, 2023

Socialite Esme O'Brien Sarnoff contemplating an unidentified sculpture in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, modeling a dress and a parasol designed by Traina-Norrell, July 25, 1944. She was then married to Robert Sarnoff, David's son.

Photo: Frank Bauman for Look magazine via MCNY

Pulling out my tiddies at weird lil outdoor sculpture museums

 Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Typewriter Eraser Scale X, Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Art, National Mall, Washington DC, 2000.

How many people remember what this represents? Perhaps they still exist, but in the age of computers it is easier to make a whole new corrected copy than to erase and retype in order to correct an error. Similar statues by Oldenburg and van Brugge can be found at Seattle Center and in Las Vegas.

Art belongs everywhere!

I'm digging the sculpture in the garden.

Hidden Figures #1 (Wake by Richard Serra) || IV.

I started to accept the possibility that I didn't quite fit any group mold here as a transplant because those molds weren't large enough to accommodate all of me. I've always been difficult to be exactly boxed, easily sorted or slid between figures around me. In my art, in my beliefs and my day to day life...I have complex turns and curves to me and make shapes of many kinds. I am part some things and other parts another, a custom make. Aren't we all? Even so, my not-easily-sorted ways had never seemed to be a barrier to fully connecting with others - until I moved here.

.

In the spaces I'd found myself in, in other cities I'd lived, you and who you were mattered more than the group identity you shared with others. You had common connections and origin stories, but at some point your views and experiences splintered off - but rarely did that change the dynamic of your group or the volume of your voice within it. It wasn't assumed you'd be exactly like the people in whatever group you found yourself in.

.

I was used to the acceptance of newcomers and nuance to a group: Clashing shapes on a canvas, the rowdy, passionate dissonance that came from discourse and teasing jokes among its members - and the understanding that, even with their apparent differences, no one belonged to the scenery any less. There was freedom to be one's full self. No shrinking for fitting. They saw your curves and angles and made room for them, creating a mosaic of people whose ideas and beliefs were brought together by common community.

.

But here in Seattle, it seemed the groups I found myself in and around thrived off their choruses of "Me too", "I feel the same way", of "We all know...", and "I think we can all say that..."s. But with all their scripts for their language, culture, interests, values, and etiquette there seemed to be no script for responses of, "I feel differently", "That's not what I think" or "That working for you doesn't mean it works for me". It felt like if I was out of step with the rest of the group, I was the one making the wrong curve; when my different arcs and waves, my different experiences, beliefs and existences appeared, an air of defensiveness entered the room or a quick silence hung in the air after they noticed me shifting. No probing, no pondering, no jokes or pokes. Just a return to the forms the group's always known, back to the angles by which the group abides.

.

I've seen and appreciated the ways in which the Seattle area prides itself on its tight-knit communities. But as a perpetual outsider, I've also seen how its groups seem to sing their choruses so loudly it's easy for them to tune out voices of difference - to not recognize a different note being sung. Either newcomers know the chorus or they just don't sing along - otherwise, when they sing a different verse, everyone seems to notice.

.

I've lived on both sides of the lines I've seen these groups draw in the sand. I've lived on both sides of a lot of lines. But it's been so long since I've felt I had to "fit in", slide cleanly into a mold, to make meaningful connections instead of feeling I was accepted the way I wholly am, curves fitting in or not. Would it really benefit me to start doing that now? Reduce myself to just one of my many aspects? Temper my complexities and angles just to fit the Seattle spaces I've found myself in?

.

I could give into the tight-knit sameness around me, do my best to mimic the shapes and movements and people around me...or I could break free of the idea that the only way to succeed in the landscape I found myself in was to fit neatly into it.

22nd November 2023

Sculpture Gallery at Carnegie Museum of Art

The Noguchi Museum

Queens, NYC

Sculpture Garden in Bomarzo, Italy

After a ridiculous week I had a pretty good day today. The docs loved their photoshopped pics in their offices (it was Doctor Appreciation Day), my boss planned a half-assed but fully earnest egg-hunt in the practice, I got to leave early AND my family and I had a wonderful night eating lots of fried cheese (unrelated but still delicious) and then going to an outdoor art thing at night (Night Forms at Trenton Grounds for Sculpture if you're in NJ!)

And then finished the night at an adorable pub that's a ice cream parlor-slash coffee shop. Real Hallmark movie vibes here with the BEST hot chocolate I've had in a while

Oh and some slammin mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Good night fam.

IG ReefDestro