Juggling Flowers, Fruit, and Vegetables

The Garden: photo Robert Hesse

Raspberries, butternut squash, and tomatoes have taken over my Saturday mornings when I would normally write the blog for Sunday. I know how to juggle three balls from my days as a professional mime, but throw in a little art, add some poetry, and the juggling gets even more thrilling.

Our Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit, Around the Pond and through the Woods on the theme of REFUGE continues Thursdays through Sundays, 11 - 4 pm.

Refuge Within, Liz Fletcher: Photo Robert Hesse

Walt Whitman visits the farm on Saturday, September 19th at 2 pm.
We will be hosting a visit from the towering Walt Whitman. If you’ve never seen Stephen Collins’ portrayal of the young, questioning Whitman, as well as the aging brilliant raconteur of love and longing, this is a rare opportunity to enjoy it en plein air. Stephen will be performing in front of the pond near my studio. Flinging Whitman’s words to the open sky makes Whitman’s poetry soar. I imagine even the kingfishers will pause to listen. Seating is limited so RSVP to reserve your seat. Tickets: $15.

Live Plein Air Poetry on Sunday afternoon, September 20th at 3 pm.
Join 26 poets sharing the poems they have written for Refuge, our online chapbook of site-specific poetry, inspired by the fields, pond, garden, trees, and creatures who live at the farm. The Zoom event will feature photographs by Brent Mathison who traced the paths of the poets and captured the glow of their words. Lynn Horsky designed the elegant chapbook. Poetry Editor Susan Edwards Richmond will be our host. You can join the livestream of this event beginning at 3 pm Sunday, at  facebook.com/OldFrogPondFarm and download the chapbook at at: penandanvil.com/hw/chapbooks.  There will be an opportunity to order a digital print copy as well.

On Saturday, September 26th we celebrate Bolton Harvard Open Studios from 10—4 pm.

When the farm season ends, I look forward to returning to more intimate blog post writing. Meanwhile, I hope you are keeping all your balls in the air!

Linda Hoffman, A Mudhead Mime, 1975

Refuge

Last night a friend said, “When I visit the farm it feels like a prayer.” Early this morning I walked through the raspberry patch and picked a pint of nature’s jewels. Each one a gift in the midst of so much uncertainty and suffering.

The farm season is changing. We are preparing to open for visitors. After laboring in the long hot days of summer, the fruits and vegetables, as well as the farmers, are breathing with more ease. The ripening is here, the bounty of nature. Vines are growing upwards heavy with heirloom tomatoes, others are sprawling across the open field landing here and there with juicy melons, while still others, the underground tubers of banana fingerling potatoes, wiggle in the soil.

The earth is alive and producing.

We will open for pick-you-own raspberries in week or so. All details will be posted on our website along with instructions for visiting to insure the safety of visitors and our farmers. Please check before you come. We will use our website opening page to let you know of daily changes.

The Ripening Begins!

Artists also offer sustenance. Old Frog Pond Farm artists have created new sculptures on the theme of Refuge and our annual outdoor exhibit, Around the Pond and Through the Woods, will be open Thursdays through Sundays, 11-4 pm, beginning on September 3.

Monk, Madeleine Lord, welded steel

We’ve also created a few shady groves along the trails where you can take refuge.

Twenty-six poets have written eloquent poems inspired by the farm on the theme of Refuge. We will not host a ‘live’ plein air poetry event this year: the event draws too many people. Instead, we are publishing an online journal and will host a zoom reading with the poets on Sunday, September 20 at 3 pm. Photographer, Brent Mathison is taking photos of the sites that inspired the poets and these will be pinned at the zoom event. More details will follow, but save the date!

Photo for Cattail Blues, Brent Mathison

Cattail Blues
—Didi Chadran

A cool, astringent wind interrupts
A late Spring heatwave, wafting the cattails,
Which sway, shimmer, sway again, resilient.

Graceful, they bend like blue notes picked, plaintive
On a hollow-bodied guitar. They tremolo and
Sustain in an ostinato whisper.

The call-and-response of Schlieren heat and
Tonic gusts croons of heartbreak and new love,
Release and reinvention, poetry

And commerce. The plants’ lot is to shelter,
Protect, and nourish the reeds’ seedlings and
Model resolve against wind, drought, and flood.

Wafting like fingers apoise on the strings
To bend to the future. It brings what it brings.

Our self-serve farm stand will continue to be open seven days a week through October. Kohlrabi, kale, broccoli, and other fall plants are going in the ground. Long-awaited, albeit brief rains, are finally falling and the earth is a little less parched. The weather beings hear our prayers!

Be well and come visit us!

Can you find the one small worm among all these organically grown tomatoes?

Lost Wax

It’s crazy how a nose from one direction can look perfectly fine, and viewed from 180 degrees, it’s too close to the eye. When I work on small wax figures, I turn them continuously around in my hands, making sure, for example, the left elbow doesn’t extend below the hip while I carve the right side of the torso. Working on a larger piece, I circle continuously; this partner dance assures everything works from all perspectives. 

Refuge, 2020, in wax in my studio. The endangered sea turtle and giraffe are rescuing the humans.

Our planet faces a ferocious loss of habitat, fifty percent of the species on the earth have disappeared in the last forty to fifty years. We’re a destructive species causing the acidifying of the ocean, the loss of precious topsoil, and the poisoning of the very air we breathe. The animals haven’t caused this harm—we have. But I like to think, despite our recklessness and selfishness, they would choose to save us.

I delivered Refuge to the foundry in early January, needing to cut off the giraffe’s legs to fit in my car. 

The turtle arrives at the foundry.

Not a problem for Zach Gabbard, owner and sole fabricator at Mission Foundry in Hyde Park. He will be taking it further apart—flippers, turtle shell, giraffe head, giraffe tail, turtle tail, and each individual person to make rubber molds.

Once he has the rubber molds, he will pour casting wax into them—the small figures solid, the large shapes like the giraffe body receive a thin layer so they can be hollow. When Zach has these wax pieces complete, he will attach the small ones together and build a funnel above each one—the constructions, intriguing modern mobiles.

The next step is to create the molds to receive the molten bronze. Each of these wax mobiles are dipped into a silica slurry nine times to slowly building up the mold. They are dipped, then coated with sand, and hung to dry for at least a day between dips.

At the pour, the funnel on top of each mold receives the liquid bronze, the wax melts out, lost wax, and the bronze hardens. These hard shells are then hammered and broken to free them from the bronze inside.  

There are still days of work ahead for Zach. He has to cut off the sprues and funnels. He has to sandblast each piece to get the specks of hard shell out of every crevice. Then the individual pieces will be welded together. Zach has to know how to replicate the textures I sculpt in my wax sculpture, and he has to do it in metal so the welded seams disappear. He has to care about the subtleties of the texture, with the deliberateness of a poet choosing words to describe the grooved furrows of an oak trunk.

I returned to the foundry a few weeks ago to position each of the the small bronze figures on the backs of the giraffe and turtle. Zach welded each one in place.

Then Refuge received its final patina and wax polish. It’s a long process. This piece is signed and numbered 1/5. Though my original waxes have disappeared, I have the molds to make four more copies. But always, for each one, we have to first make a new wax model, then cast it into bronze. After five copies, we’ll destroy the molds. 

Lost wax is an apt metaphor for these times: The only way to create something new is to lose something.  While we are collectively facing tremendous loss, it is good to reflect on the space that allows for something new to arise. The loss is real—people’s lives, habitat, species, jobs, freedom. I am alarmed, but I dearly want to believe that we can turn things around. We need humility. We need respect for every living being on the planet. Then the turtle and the giraffe, the heron and the wasp, the oak, the waterlily, and even the gnat will all be helping because we are all interconnected.

Refuge would have been outdoors at the Fuller Museum this summer, but Covid has delayed the opening of the New England Sculptors Exhibit until spring 2021. It sits on a chunk of bedrock outside my studio. I’d love to send more casting work Zach’s way, so if you would be interested in a copy of Refuge for your own garden, let’s talk. 

Refuge, bronze, 2020

Refuge is a hopeful piece. The determined, young giraffe and the tireless turtle are unconcerned with the enormity of their mission. They echo the world’s need for us to engage, to bring our gifts, and to offer help in this time of great loss. It’s a collective dance we can’t do alone.

See Change

For those of you who live in the Greater Boston area, here’s something wonderful to see!  See Change is Studio Without Walls’ new exhibit of site-responsive sculpture along the Riverway Park in Brookline. The exhibit was to have opened in April but was postponed indefinitely because of Covid. Now, through the downright doggedness of its founder, Bette Ann Libby, and the willingness of the Brookline Parks and Open Spaces Department, it’s open to the public, free—and a pure delight! When Holly Cyganiewicz and I were installing our sculpture, A Tree Grows in Brookline, two fathers, both with children under three years old, stopped to chat. They walk this lovely oasis every day while on childcare duty. We’ll be back, they each said.

A Tree Grows in Brookline, Linda Hoffman and Holly Cyganiewicz; tree trunk with burl, painted curly willow branches

I was delighted to see Bob Shannahan’s life-size Mastodon and its Mother, made with alder and sumac branches, a sculpture exhibited at Old Frog Pond Farm last fall. And to find,Julie Lupien Nussbaum’s Alien Fishery, where she’s augmented the lone fish accompanying her sculpture Vodnik with Cruel Shoes also exhibited at the farm, and created a school of fish hanging from a high oak branch. If there’s a slight breeze, when you pause to watch, they turn as one body. Some sculptures in this family-friendly exhibit respond to the devastation of our planet, others to the need for justice and equality, and some captivate and offer hope for the future with their colors and shapes.

Studios Without Walls is a Brookline-based collaborative group of sculptors and conceptual artists who produce exhibitions of art in outdoor and public settings. Their commitment is to bring art to their community and educate audiences to appreciate and participate with outdoor sculpture. Photographs of this year’s installations, site maps, as well as treasure hunt clues are online at Studios Without Walls. Globe Correspondent Karen Campbell wrote in her glowing review, “With sculptures tailored to nestle in and around the trees, a leisurely amble offers a surprising visual treat of clever, substantive, thought-provoking art.”

Bllnkah II Liz Helfer; broken windshield glass

Brookline’s Parks and Open Space director said, “Brookline’s Studios Without Walls affirms the power of art to change your perspective.” The thirteen participating artists are Gail Jerauld Bos, Grey Held, Liz Helfer, Linda Hoffman and Holly Cyganiewicz, Janet Kawada, Bette Ann Libby, Julie Lupien Nussbaum, Madeleine Lord, Maria Ritz, Bob Shannahan, Marnie Sinclair, Allen M. Spivack, and Delanie Wise.

The exhibit is open through September 7, 2020. Wear your masks, stay six feet apart, and take a stroll along the Muddy River. The Longmont T stop will take you there and free parking is available on nearby streets.

Thank you Brookline Parks and Open Spaces, sponsors and supporters of Studios Without Walls, and especially the artists. We all want to “See Change”!!