Taking Place

they’re cute when they’re little!

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In the Euonymus post, I was mostly interested in the pattern of fallen leaves on the stone (geometric meets organic again), but the shrub seemed necessary to complete the story.  In these two photos, I was ok with leaving out the source of the leaves.  Maybe because the Japanese Maple leaves are so recognizable and [...]

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Check out the landscape photography of Lyle Gomes.

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. . . and its friends

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Alita Cha-Am.

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Sometimes the more abstract and vessel-like landscape is the one we can enter, with a view into a distant landscape that is picturesque and irregular.  So this seems like a reversal of the pattern that places the messy real where you are and the abstract ideal where you aren’t.
Unless you transpose the qualifications “messy” and [...]

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The empty center matters in part because we are accustomed to regarding the center, and whatever is put there, as important.  It’s right there in the language:  You can be central, or you can be marginal.  Open up the center, and everything around it is set into tenuous stability or into motion.
 
 
The center also matters [...]

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Here’s my overthinking:
1. As Deb suggests, empty spaces are not only more “clean,” or uncluttered, than spaces full of people, but more idealized, or abstract, as well.
2. We are wired to pay attention to people. For us to give a space itself our attention, it helps a lot to take the people out of the [...]

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The Gardner and Fenway Park show that places whose central space cannot be entered (at least by most visitors) can be compelling.  Examples include certain bodies of water; the Reflection Pool at the Bloedel Reserve and the large rectangular pool at the Christian Science Center come to mind as places where people can come to [...]

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