Dan's Papers - July 11, 2008 -

Last weekend an invitational exhibit opened at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton called On and Off the Ground, the Container as Art. Out of 75 individuals invited to present, 24 responded with flair, putting together planters, plants, artwork, ceramic sculpture, old machinery, logs, sod, glass, metal, sand and seashells. As a participant, I chose sand and seashells as the medium for a series of containers.

My mother in law, Sarah Lojac glued seashells on cement pots that an uncle cast for her. Over time she would paint them, glue sequins on and sometimes paint them again. By the time we met only one green pot was left by the front door. Seashells are the embodiment of beauty and exotic locales for me, even if my favorite is the local channeled whelk. Following in her footsteps, I have been gluing limpets, snails and scallops on pots for a while.

So I began searching for the right planter. This ended happily when Seibert and Rice offered to donate some pots - I could use whatever I wanted from their impressive stock of hand built Italian terra cotta planters made in Impruneta that are winter hardy, meaning they can be left out all year round. I ordered a 36" planter and scavenged another gorgeous ornamental planter from co- owner Mara Seibert's garage in Southampton, which is decorated with sculpted mermaids and sea gods. My oceanic theme was born.

One day, Scott Schleicher came over to fix my irrigation but due to complications we started to chat instead and I told him about my first design concept: a sculpture of a mermaid seated in the pot adorned with shells, with her tail draped over the side. He suggested Jeff Muhs a local sculptor, who allowed us to run over to his studio right then. Brought up by Captain Muhs, one of the most noted local decoy carvers in the area, Jeff had learned the art of carving but moved on to other materials. He also was a winner of the sandcastle contest in Atlantic City a couple of times. We hit it off and Jeff was interested but as time went by a conflicting gallery show date came up, prohibiting his involvement.

So what to do? I wanted to have a connection to the local sea history, and I had started to shop for seashells from all over the world to put on the sides of the pots. I finally settled on 8" scalIop-like orange lion's paws, striped foxes, Phillipine barnacles, Linki starfish, pink murexes, sundials, pectins with barnacles. As I had always wanted a giant clam, I ordered one of those too. It was so heavy that when it came the pallet it was on was destroyed. From what I have been told those clams will soon be unavailable.

Next came the decision of what to actually put in the container. I thought of Fran Taubman on Shelter Island, a metal worker who fabricates all kinds of furniture, light fixtures and out door sculptures in her own workshop. Seibert and I snooped around the studio looking for pieces to scavenge or some inspiration. Taubman had a very interesting metal ribbon sculpture and a table. She invited me to come for a weekend to light up the torches and bend some metal to create a sculpture around the pots. I accepted, it was too good of an offer to pass up.

But Taubman is a true artist and she did me a far more valuable service in the long run. She asked questions, like "what in your heart of hearts do you really want?" This is the kind of thing that I ask clients when I wanted to be struck by a bolt of lightning or needed an idea. She also asked me why I was doing this. Well I replied, I wanted to have fun. I learned recently that Tiffany said that he felt that he did his best work for himself or for exhibitions. There were no design parameters set by marketing or clients so he could express his own ideas. Many of the others participants in the Long House exhibit understand this. The most interesting part of the show for me is seeing the personal expressions of some of my garden designer friends. Each planter has its own story behind how and why it was created.

Taubman told me what to avoid, what not to do and gave me some mental parameters that let me wander down the right creative alley. My eye fell upon my 19th century eel spear and a design concept started to take shape in my mind.

The eel spear was dug out of an old London Plane tree in North Haven. Evidently some one had gone eeling in the nearby creek a long time ago, and forgot that he leaned his spear against the tree. As the century progressed, the tree grew around the spear so that it was imbedded in the center of its trunk. Over time the tree went into decline and had to be removed. The arborist dulled his chain saw on the ell spear more than once while trying to cut into the tree. (One just like it is in the Shinnecock Indian Museum on Montauk Highway in Southampton.)

This was a local, historical representation of Neptune's trident and I decided to find more to use in the planters. They could extend up over foliage plants that resembled sealife or local seashore plants like Artemisia, in place of flowers. I found some on e-bay and took a trip to Hampton Bays to see Brian Trujillo, who has a wonderful collection and was willing to sell a few of lesser quality to me. He explained that a winter spear had thin tines and a summer spear had thicker ones. I had brought along my eel spear and he identified it as having been made by one of the Fordham brothers from Sag Harbor. He had one in his collection that was made exactly the same way. Eel spears were forged by local blacksmiths and each one had its own design. The ones Brian admired the most were made from a single sheet of iron that was cut and heated so that the tines could be bent into the appropriate shape. Some were made so that a broken tine was easily replaced. Today they look graphic, elegant and slightly dangerous in their rusty state.

Finally all my materials were assembled. My mother and I tried different combinations of seashells on the biggest pot to find the right pattern. We settled on the Lion's Paw and the Striped Foxes as the major elements. A few blisters later from the glue gun, and I had the largest pot ready for transport. But I needed another large pot and time did not allow me to order one from Seibert and Rice, so I bought a cement planter from Lynch's and covered it with red sand from Red Creek in Hampton Bays. A 3M adhesive offered up by my husband helped keep the sand in place but unfortunately, it was incompatible with the glue I used to apply the large orange starfish, which at this point had started to stink.

In the end I applied local sand to the ornamental pot as well, which was planted with sedum. Rhubarb went in the cement pot with Starfish. The grand dame, with all its multicolored seashells, looked like it had just arrived from Viscaya, an old garden south of Miami. It got filled at the last minute on site with steely blue Bismark palms.

It took eight people to set up this series of planters. The giant clam was planted with eschiums in pure white sand and it rides on the crest of a sand dune, cradling our local sea gem, a channeled whelk found in North Sea. All the pots are surrounded by sand dunes or waves of sand that wash around them the way ocean waves wash seashells up on the beach. This was everyone's favorite part of the installation actually. As soon as the sand was dumped they started to lie around on it or push it around with their hands. I finally shooed every one away so that I could be alone with my glue gun and my sand piles which were the last piece of inspiration to reveal themselves to me.