Botanical Bling

It's my pleasure introduce our guest blogger of the week, Tres Fromme. Tres has lent design expertise to numerous exhibitions and projects over the past few years including Moore in America, Orchid Daze, the new Southern Seasons Garden, and the Edible Garden scheduled to open next spring. He is an Associate with MESA Design Associates in Dallas, Texas and leads the firm’s Public Garden Studio. With degrees in both horticulture and landscape architecture, he possesses a unique combination of artistic sensibility and plant knowledge. Here's what Tres had to say about designing plantings for the Moore sculptures...

I often see Henry Moore sculptures set on rolling lawns dotted with trees or on paved plazas. (photo, right: Large Reclining Figure, 1983, OCBC Bank HQ, Singapore) The effect is either pastorally romantic or boldly modern. The Atlanta Botanical Garden has taken a unique approach, exhibiting the pieces in intimate, human-scaled garden spaces.

Moore found his inspiration in natural forms, so it makes perfect sense to return his work to the garden and all its horticultural exuberance. The sculpture placements create unique relationships among the sculptures, plants, and viewers. People are able to engage the sculptures in close proximity in the way they typically encounter the plants. The garden setting, in many ways, removes any sense of museum-like distance between people and the art.

The exhibition design encourages plants and sculpture to form a seamless integration of horticulture and art. The ABG design team was able to creatively accentuate the sculptures with annual plantings, creating intriguing compositions of color and texture.

Fine-textured flowers create a white foam lapping at the base of the milky blue and enigmatic Hill Arches. The plants move in the wind, further contrasting with the solidity of the sculpture. At night, the flowers sparkle and appear as if they are stars against the clouds of the Milky Way.
A field of pink-streaked foliage creates a living carpet on which sits Reclining Mother and Child. Veils of taller pink Spider Flowers (Cleome) form a backdrop veil to frame the piece. It as if the piece is wrapped in living fabrics. I thought pink would be a perfect color to ironically suggest the “femininity” of the piece while also contrasting with the dark patina. Of course, I wanted a brazen shade of pink to emphasize the irony and match the grandeur of Moore’s vision.

One of the boldest design gestures was placing Large Reclining Figure into an existing flower border. The piece gracefully emerges from the vegetation as if it had been there for years (even though the Garden carefully installed it weeks ago!). The sculpture reminds me of a gigantic alien animal, so I thought a naturalistic planting would provide a suitably exotic habitat. The effect is pure magic.