New York City is a huge city with a lot of frenetic energy. That is all the more reason to find and enjoy the lovely gardens that are spread throughout the city. My personal favorite is the Gardens at St. Luke in the Fields, which is at 487 Hudson Street in the West Village. Recently I found an East Village garden that is now another favorite in the lower Manhattan area. Nothing makes one care more about our planet and recycling than a good dose of nature. It is actually possible to sit in a tucked away corner of this garden and “get away from it all.” It is a beautiful place for meditation, or resting ones weary feet.
The Liz Christy Garden is Located at Houston Street between Bowery and Second Avenue. The term ”bowerie” is Dutch for farm. Many years ago, during the 17th century a large farm was at the site of the current Liz Christy Community Garden. At the time it was owned by “the last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam,” Peter Stuyvesant.(1)” What remained of the farm was in shambles during the 1970’s.
In 1973, local resident Liz Christy took an interest in the plot of land. She and the Green Guerillas, a community of gardening activists went to NYC’s Housing and Preservation and Development office to inquire about using the lot. Volunteers gathered to haul out debris, and installed a fence. In April of 1974, “NYC’s Housing and Preservation and Development approved the site for rental as “Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden” for $1 a month (2).” Work began towards planting raised beds, adding of donated topsoil, and planting of vegetables, trees and flowers.
By the garden’s second year it won its “first Mollie Parnis Dress Up Your Neighborhood Award (3).” New York residents throughout the five boroughs were inspired to start similar gardens. In 1986 the Garden was named after its founder, Liz Christy. Massive renovations have been going on throughout the neighborhood for many years. In 1990, the Cooper Square Committee, “pledged to preserve the garden in its entirety (4).” In 2002, in a more recent agreement, the NYS Attorney General also agreed to preservation of the Liz Christy Garden.
The garden is open to the public year round. The hours are:
Saturday- Noon to 4Pm (All year)
Sunday-Noon to 4pm (May to Sept.)
Tues. and Thursday- 6pm to dusk (May to Sept.)
There is a donation box in the garden for donations towards tools and supplies to further the maintenance of the garden. There is also a website for the garden if you wish to find out more about it: http://www.lizchristygarden.us/
I hope you enjoyed this post and hopefully I can make it to another garden or two while the weather is warm to share more photos of lovely New York City gardens. I have always been a big fan of gardens and am a member of two gardens within the Brooklyn Land Trust. Years ago I visited Adam Purple’s Garden of Eden many times, actually on a regular basis when he had it on Rivington Street, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I remember Adam Purple from when I was a young adolescent walking with my family in Central Park years ago. He would bike ride to the park to collect horse manure for his garden. Adam always wore purple, thus his name Adam Purple. He raised vegetables and herbs in a garden outside of his apartment building after the building was condemned and abandoned. He distributed the fruits of his labor to the surrounding neighbors, and even me when I visited. He stayed living there and continued his garden until the city finally closed it down many years later, in 1986. I was one of the people who wanted to stop the bulldozer. Adam said the tree in the center was “sucking up too much water” and that eventually the tree would kill the garden anyway, so he seemed to have accepted that the garden had run its course. About his garden he said “It’s the Athenian oath.” “The Athenian oath. The duty and responsibility of every citizen to leave the scene a little better than when they got there, to improve things (5).” The city never could get him to leave his home though and eventually a new building was built there. He was guaranteed his home since he had been there so many years already. The world needs more people like Adam Purple and Liz Christy who nurture and tend to the soil, making beauty out of chaos and rubble.
My daughter, Emily Owens, has been studying photography in Denver, Colorado. This is some of her latest work. I really got excited when I saw her scanograms. Emily also enjoys writing poetry and short stories. I have posted one of her poems here. The collage below it was a social statement about what impoverished kids can look forward to in the US.
When Emily was a teenager she would just go bonkers if she got bored. She started picking up her camera and taking selfies long before it really became a big thing. She’d even go into the bathroom and take pictures of herself with the mirror in there, or lie around on the floor getting various shots at various angles. I came to conclusion that she had a real knack for photography and I still wish she’d write a book about the art of taking selfies, since she has taken some really awesome ones.
Emily has two books of poetry that have been published. You can read her poetry at:https://invisiblescript.wordpress.com. She had compiled a third book of poems, and unfortunately her writing was so hot someone stole all the copies!! At some point she will need to get that one together again!
Her self-portrait shows her love of books. Even as a baby she used to line up her Beatrice Potter books and practice walking on them. When she was old enough to take her first walks alone she wanted to go to the book store.
There is another poem of Emily’s that I will share on here soon however I am waiting until after I do a Richard Brautigan post. Emily is very passionate about Richard Brautigan, whom I learned about as a teenager from my uncle, and later exposed Emily to when she was a teenager. This other poem of hers is very Brautigan inspired and shows influence from him; therefore I will wait until later on.
My foot surgery was postponed due to my podiatrist breaking his thumb. I tell you! I was getting all ready! Instead my podiatrist needs surgery on the day I was supposed to, which was actually yesterday!! He broke his thumb playing basketball. So now I have tentatively rescheduled for surgery on September 4th. I am eager to get my foot in better shape and get the surgery behind me! Oh well such is life, never know how things are going to unfold!!
I had a great start of this past week. There was a show at the Cornelian Street Café and I got to see three singer songwriters I hadn’t seen play together in over twenty years. That was exciting!! They were part of the folk music scene I hung out on for seven years prior to becoming a mother.
I hope you all enjoyed this post and I will be posting updates of Emily’s work and that other poetry occasionally.
And what we saw was not destroyed, not particularized or homogenized by the exteriors of a failing mirror-
Our gaze saw past the tumbling tide of an American waste crippling under its own weight.
What we saw
Was not a televised programme brought to us by a rich man’s overflowing credit score and late night Babylon or realities we can’t surpass or suppress or waste time to try and realize.
What we saw was not a drought.
There was no absence of sound and the earth did not shake in desperation like it does today.
The hunger was different more. More manageable.
The people’s eyes had not been replaced by hungry synonyms and false vacancies. Their talents not wasted on beauty renting itself out, mimicking substance.
There is the constant vein of fashion in this blog. I love recycling and my main goal here is still to inspire others to upcycle, wear vintage or thrifted items whenever possible. I have always enjoyed fashion; I find it inspiring. As a child, after my parents took me to the opera numerous times, I drew little drawings of women in those hoops skirts that wear so popular from the 1590’s through the mid-19th century. I especially liked the older ones, from the 1700’s, with the low plunging neck lines and super full skirts. I drew hundreds of them, designing them as I went along. I felt as if maybe I’d been born into the wrong era, things old and antique inspired me. I never thought about the fact that I was designing, I just did it. When I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology to show my portfolio I waited for four hours for the head of illustration. The head of design saw me out in the hallway all that time. He eventually asked me into his office and urged me to study design. It is a long story but I always regretted that I just didn’t wait longer for the head of illustration. Design is great, but I remained so devoted to art and illustration. I just never was able to go back to school for art after I became a single parent. Parenthood became my whole life for so long. My daughter has always been the best thing that ever happened to me, so for her life I am forever grateful. For the brief time that I did study fashion design, I remember how we always had to create a design and find twenty five ways to do it. The best way to get to the point that one can see something twenty five different ways is to be inspired. That leads us to art.
I have been doing more posts about art. I think art is very important for the reason that it feeds us, throughout our joys and struggles in life we need to return to what inspires us, what makes us feel alive. It makes me happy to share the art of others who have inspired me, touched my life in some way through their work. When I feel lost or weary, or worn down by life I can always return to their work, it inspires me and helps me to grow as a person on my own journey. I would also like to do some post about people who are doing art with recycled items. I am still working on that part.
I have never liked boredom. I enjoy keeping busy. If I am totally frazzled I will veg out and watch a movie. If I am relaxed, and want to relax further reading is a great vehicle to more relaxation. Years ago I realized that every time I sat down to read for twenty minutes I felt a difference in my nervous system. Everything seemed to calm down. Meditation helps also, to clear my mind, relax my body, and center my life from the chaos of things I can’t control. When I was a child I saw that my grandparents were raised with that notion that “idle hands are the work of the devil.” My parents tried to shield me from those extremes of thought- but the desire to create with my hands, do crafts and embrace creativity come partially from that old vein of thought. So I appreciate it from a certain standpoint and let go of the rest. Both my grandmothers loved sewing, both my grandfathers loved woodwork, one did carvings; and one went on to become a master carpenter and engineer in the Navy. One of my grandmothers attended a craft high school in the mountains of Georgia. Their love for creativity was passed down through the years and I am forever grateful.
I have been learning things about upcycling clothing. Seeing that I can have an idea, and then when I cut the fabric I can suddenly decide to change my mind, go a different route. It mirrors my life at times. Those times when we are at pivotal points in life and not sure what is going on, which way to go. The upcycling inspires me even further when I see how flexible I can suddenly become with it. The same is true with life, how things can seem so stagnant for a while, then suddenly a new flood gate opens, a new opportunity arises, things change. Just like some wind that has blown in from a different direction and everything suddenly shifts, quivers, and lands differently.
I thought I’d do a separate post called “The Morning Muse” but somehow I think they can go together , this blog birthday, and my what I refer to as my “Morning Muse.” I have been talking about this the last few months with a few people, here or there, and several people told me they appreciated me telling them how I became inspired to honor these moments the last year and a half. It just sort of slowly evolved into a habit. I felt as if I was getting up in the morning, only focusing on my stretches and leg exercises (I have arthritis and foot pain so this is a daily challenge I have to work with) then getting ready to go to work. So often I found that I was too tired or frazzled after a long work day, commuting to do anything creative at the end of the day. This had been happening so many times through the last few years I felt sad about it. I needed a change- so I started my “Morning Muse” routine. What that means is that even if it is only five to fifteen minutes I start something creative. Or if I have something in the process that isn’t completed I will devote five to fifteen minutes to it. I have noticed that this daily effort to focus on that muse has assisted me, in that I know, I have something unfinished waiting for me. I want to go back to it; I want to finish it. The mere act of starting it propels me further little by little. I definitely feel that going to Portland, Oregon in the fall of 2013 caught my creativity on fire. I still haven’t been able to do everything I was inspired to do; the city just threw fuel on my fire and changed my life. It was an amazing experience, to go to a place that I felt looks the most like my personality of any place I have ever been. I also think this “Morning Muse” routine could be helpful to people who aren’t necessarily creative as well. It is about doing something that focuses on who you are, what makes you tick. It doesn’t have to be something creative. It could just be doing something you find special that lightens your heart and makes your day better.
Music helps me to center myself and get into the place I want to be for the creativity to flow. For years I embraced silence- hour upon hour of silence. I still enjoy silence, I have found it to be incredibly healing, but I am so happy that I let the music flow back into my life more often. It not only helps me to get to that place where there is more inspiration, it helps to keep it flowing, growing and feeding the creative fire. There are a bunch of musicians I like who have helped my creative process. The past several months I like listening to a lot of Jack Hardy, who was a folk singer in the folk scene I used to hang out on in the West Village. I always liked his songs, but now they help my creativity return to that time when I felt that I was at my most creative, when I was young and it was as if my mind was on fire. I am older now, much more calm and centered. I enjoy that there is a bridge to carry me to that old inspiration and time though. I find it ignites my soul, keep me in touch with the soft spots, where there is plenty of room for more growth, more freedom of expression.
I am sharing this song of Jack Hardy’s “The Tailor” since I always loved how he expresses an opinion about clothing, fashion, disguising one’s self, the emptiness in something like competitiveness; the real nakedness that is always underneath and so evident despite everything people do to cover up their insecurities. At the end of the post I have also written out the lyrics to his song since I always have loved his lyrics, they are like poetry. Jack passed away on March 11, 2011. A bunch of his songs are available to hear on YouTube.
I also want to express how having this blog has been helping me not be quite so shy; I am one of those people who are initially shy. The only time this wasn’t a challenge was when I was in retail or wholesale sales, since the whole approach was different under those circumstances. Once I get comfortable I am fine, but there has always been this element of shyness underneath. The mere act of creating posts, taking pictures of myself for posts, and then finding readers has been helping me get over hurdles emotionally. I still am shy, but it is not the same now. The whole confidence factor is more solid. It really helps to express myself this way and to find that others are enjoying my process as well. In one of my earliest post I wrote about not being allowed to express my thoughts much as a child. My biological father was rather controlling. I also wrote in that post about how I found clothing to be my first easy way to express rebellion. It is important for me to have a voice, as it is for all of us. I have attached a picture I found in magazine years ago. I have been wild about that phrase “I send a voice, let me be free” ever since I saw this picture.
And so my blog is having its first birthday. It has been rewarding, challenging and a lot of work. I finally feel like I am finding ways to create more frequent posts, and for them to not all be so time consuming. I came up with a different plan of cycles of posts. Some of them involve lots of research and hours of figuring out how to write what I want to write. Others are not so complicated. I plan to alternate these in such a way that only once or twice a month am I doing hours of research, so that the other times I can focus on creating the photos, loading them and all the technical things one deals with while having a blog. I also have a facebook page, you are welcome to like it if you wish. The URL is :https://www.facebook.com/rewindreduceandrecycle. There are times I share different things on there since it is not the blog.
I really admire people who manage to have a zero waste lifestyle. Lauren Singer, from Trash is For Tossers is an example. (http://www.trashisfortossers.com/) I would like to work towards that goal myself eventually, but for right now I realize “Easy does it.” I am a person who really enjoys recycling things, finding ways to cut down on packaged items and I am doing a lot already. As time goes by I am able to do more and more, so I also aim to share these with you. All of us have choices and our choices do have an effect on our planet, the more conscious we become of them the more we can do.
I appreciate those of you who have been logging on regularly and reading the posts. Also, thanks to several of you who have shared the various blog posts with others. My mother and daughter have been very supportive, and that has been wonderful. I hope you enjoyed this post and are having a great time outdoors this summer!
Lyrics to The Tailor
By Jack Hardy:
“The king’s guards man’s greedy, he’s underpaid he knows
Tailor sew me a cloak of indigo, that will disguise me well for the highway’s game
No one will suspect evil and the king’s cross are the same
I will pay you dearly with half of what I claim
No said the tailor, the tailor said no
A cloak will not hide what your own eyes see
A cloak will not change what is hidden underneath
Just as mind does not confine the idea of what I am
I am not a tailor, I am a man
The king’s queen is hungry for the pleasures adultery knows
Tailor sew me a cloak of scarlet, that will disguise me well for courting on the sly, that will make the fever transparent to the night’s eye
I will pay you dearly with favors and with sighs
No said the tailor, the tailor said no,
A cloak will not hide what your own eyes sees, a cloak will not change what is hidden underneath,
Just as mind does not confine what I am, I am not a tailor, I am a man
The king he is frightened with shadows behind his back
Tailor sew me a cloak of sable, that will disguise me well from the daggers of my foes, that will keep me far above those that are below
I will pay you dearly if you fail on the gallows
No said the tailor, the tailor said no
A cloak will not hide what your own eyes see
A cloak will not change what is hidden underneath
Just as mind does not confide the idea of what I am, I am not a tailor, I am a man.”
When I first began to look at several of Deborah Turbeville’s photographs at a time, I felt as if I was transforming into her world, stepping alongside her and she was leading me into a journey. It was a gentle shift of focus, and it had a lingering effect. In my eyes, I see that she embraced what the Japanese refer to as “waba sabi.” In the book Waba-Sabi for Artists, Designer, Poets & Philosophers, the Waba-Sabi state of mind is described as “Acceptance of the inevitable. Waba-sabi is an aesthetic appreciation of the evanescence of life. The luxuriant tree of summer is now only branches under a winter sky. All that remains of a splendid mansion is a crumbled foundation overgrown with weeds and moss. Waba-sabi images force us to contemplate our own mortality, and they evoke an existential loneliness and tender sadness. They also stir a mingled bittersweet comfort, since we know all existence shares the same fate (1).” These are the kind of emotions that her photographs bring to the surface. Turbeville also expressed that she felt anxiety in herself, and that “you can see the future on the women’s faces, in their apprehension.” She also “literally manipulated her negatives, scratching them, tearing them, scattering dust on them and otherwise distressing them- to make the finished images redolent of decay. She employed faded color, black-and-white and sepia tones; prints were often deliberately overexposed, rendering her subjects spectral (2).”
Born into a wealthy family in New England in 1932, Turbeville lived in somewhat isolated manner and was encouraged to be unique. Her family had a summer home in Ogunquit, Maine and she later described it as “very sorry, very sinister, very beautiful.” It was the experience of visiting this summer home, the wind swept coastal areas, and backgrounds that she saw, that later became her inspiration for her photographs.
When Turbeville began her exploration into fashion photography she shocked many people. Her work was counter culture to what had been set up as precedence in the world of fashion. Her pictures weren’t bright, shiny and focused on the model and what she was wearing. Turbeville had a different focus, therefore her photographs were darker, containing moodiness, and she used backgrounds that she felt would convey what she wanted to, which was a whole new realm of fashion photography. In 1977, Turbeville told the Times “I can’t deny that I design the background. A woman in my pictures doesn’t just sit there. In what kind of a mood would a woman be, wearing whatever? I go into a woman’s private world, where you never go.” In 2009, Women’s Wear Daily wrote that Turbeville was becoming famous for transforming fashion photography into an avant-garde art.” In 2011, Turbeville told The New Yorker “Fashion takes itself more seriously than I do. I’m not really a fashion photographer.”
Laird Borrelli- Persson wrote for Vogue “Deborah Turbeville’s photographs are as evocative as a lingering trace of fragrance. Not the clear, bright burst of summer floral, but something moody and mysterious that captures the essence of the decaying bloom and the light soft-focus haze of memory.”
In 1975 Turbeville shocked the fashion world by photographing five women “in a condemned New York bathhouse.” The photo was part of a shoot for Vogue, and became famous.
Deborah Turbeville began her journey into photography on her own in the 1960’s. Until 1966, she was completely self-taught. She had worked a sample model for designer Claire McCardell, following that she became a fashion editor at Mademoiselle and Harper’s Bazaar Magazines. Vogue quotes that ” as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazzar, she pushed the sittings she styled to be more than simply straight fashion pictures. (For example, despite her background as a model, she made efforts to cast decidedly non-model types.) After a while, the editor in Chief told Turbeville she was “just too much for this magazine,” and let her go.” The irony of that was that later on they were eager to have her photographs in their magazine!
During her work at Harper’s Bazaar she had met influential people and worked with photographer Richard Avedon. Soon after her departure from Harper’s Bazaar she showed her photographs to him. He was teaching some advanced photography classes with art director Marvin Israel at the time. He felt that her work was advanced and she joined their classes. During her studies with Avedon, he conveyed to her that he believed she would succeed as a photographer.
During the 1980’s Turbeville traveled to Europe numerous times to work on advertising campaigns for designers such as Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro and Comme des Garcon. Her work was frequently published by Italian Vogue, Casa Vogue, the New York Times Magazine and W Magazine. She had an apartment in New York and a home in Sao Miguel de Allende in Mexico. She also spent considerable time in St. Petersburg, Russia and Paris, France.
In 1982, Turbeville won an American Book Award for her series of photographs for “Unseen Versailles.” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the editor of Doubleday at the time, had commissioned her to document the abandoned sections of the backrooms of Versailles. To add a bit of “autumnal aspect” to the settings Turbeville brought in bags of dead leaves and scattered them about the rooms. Turbeville created several other books of her photographs. Casa No Name is a book with photos of her home in the highlands of Mexico. Studio St. Petersburg was created due to her love of this city and her travels there in Russia.
Turbeville died in of lung cancer on October 25, 2013, in New York, at the age of 81.
Deborah Turbeville
Wabi-Sabi for Artist, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren pg. 54
