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On Thursday, I had the pleasure of attending the preview of the new Bending Nature exhibit at the Franklin Park Conservatory. This new installation includes works by 15 artists including Dorothy Gill Barnes (Columbus), David Byrne (NYC), Dennis Oppenheim (NYC), Shigeo Kawashima (Kanagawa, Japan) and many others.
This exhibit is part of an ongoing program at the Franklin Park Conservatory to more strongly connect the art world with the horticultural world. Several of the artists will be present at the conservatory through the end of the exhibition in March 2009. Some pieces have been commissioned for the Conservatory and will remain as permanent fixtures throughout the building.
Bending Nature includes sculpture, photography, drawings, video and film. A children’s area also features interactive stations where kids can discover the processes behind the featured installments.
Franklin Park Conservatory is located at 1777 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio, 43203 and is open Tuesday � Sunday, 10 a.m. � 5 p.m. and Wednesday, 10 a.m. � 8 p.m. Admission is $7.50 for adults, $6.00 for seniors and students, and $4.00 for children 2-12. Members and children under 2 are free. All exhibitions are included in the general admission price.
Will definitely be going to this during Experience Columbus Days!
Also: http://www.fpconservatory.org/cocktails.htm
Find your way to the Conservatory’s newly opened rooftop gardens on Thursday evenings.
Enjoy the featured cocktail or a full bar selection along with small plate hors d’oeuvres from Cameron Mitchell Catering.
DJs from Encore Entertainment provide the musical backdrop while the Palm House glows with the new James Turrell light installation.
Thursday evenings
August 14 through October 30
5:30 – 10:00 p.m.
No cover – 21 and over – Free Parking
For additional information: 614-645-1800
September – Sunflowers & Sangria
October –Mums & Martinis
Can’t wait for this exhibit. Dorothy Gill Barnes is one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known, and she makes phenomenal artwork. The rest of the exhibit looks great, too.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
By Tracy Zollinger Turner
Thousands of desk calendars, coffee-table books and computer wallpapers herald the majesty and beauty of unbridled nature, but humans don’t always like our environment wild. Golf courses, manicured gardens and even the produce we buy for our dinner tables are all regularly manipulated to bring plants under our control — sometimes to make them more useful, other times to imbue them with a humanized sense of beauty.
That relationship is central to Bending Nature, an exhibit threaded through the Franklin Park Conservatory. One of its opening images is a photographic mural of Columbus’ Deaf School Topiary Garden, which depicts artist Georges-Pierre Seurat’s painting “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” in evergreen and iron.
“It’s a wonderful, literal example of bending nature,” said curator Robert Stearns. “Fifteen years into the process, it’s still in process. Once [the topiary figures] take full shape, they need to be maintained and controlled.”
Stearns treated the entire grounds as his exhibition space, using the biomes, courtyards and traditional galleries for the show. He deliberately chose not to insert anything new into the Pacific Island Water Garden, because it’s a work of the same theme on its own, “another climate, lifted and set down here in Columbus, Ohio.”
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I think I mentioned it in a different thread… but this is an awesome exhibit. Highly recommended.
i will definately have to go check this out. havent been to the conservatory since chihuli was there and then chapunga last year. they always have a good exhibition going on which adds to just how wonderful the conservatory is in itself.