I have found no greater outlet for my creative energies than the call to design a theatrical garden. The possibility of mixing fantasy and fable blends with the capacity to work with professional horticulturalists and craftsmen - the result being a remarkable botanical stage set. As a student of this varied and magical discipline, I find myself striving to reach a little further than the common “show garden” effort, seeking out assistance from other artistic disciplines and working to present unusual flora within a complex theme.
We have worked with an eclectic mix of creative folk, from model train enthusiasts to Lewis & Clark historians, from a team of armored knights to natural dye experts and collectors of international antiquities and precious Native American artifacts. Throughout all of this, I have struggled to understand what fires and sustains the passion to create. Where does the passion to design originate?
Planning a garden over two decades ago, I gained a fascinating insight and fundamental lesson. In 2004 I sought out noted author and artist Nick Bantock to assist with a theatrical garden we were planning for the Northwest Flower & Garden Show in Seattle. Bantock is best known as the New York Times bestselling author of the popular Griffin & Sabine books and is a prolific and internationally recognized artist, having illustrated book covers for Phillip Roth and John Updike. His paintings, illustrations and sculptural works blend varied and fantastic elements to create a rich tableau that may contain old stamps, religious imagery, hermetic engravings, antique postcards or other ephemera. It’s not unusual to see Asian, Hindu and medieval themes collaged together in a way that transcends description. At the same time, he is able to recreate photorealistic portraits, build unusual sculpture and craft mythical stories of time and place. More than any other artistic collaborator, his work had a timeless, international feel that struck a chord within me. In short, he was just the sort of eccentric character to teach us something new and push our staff in new and unexpected directions. Working closely with donated materials from Monrovia’s Piet Karsseboom, furniture crafter Tom Jahns and the stone mason/antiquity collector Richard Rhodes, we assembled the ‘La Palabra Pintada” garden in 2006.
With this garden our curiosity took us to Andalusia, the Alhambra and Moroccan influences. In the research phase, I was drawn to the writings of the Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca. He writes that, in order to find your creative spark and unlock your highest creative awareness, you must seek out the “Duende”, a mysterious creative force that comes from deep within us.
Since that time, I have pondered the enigmatic concept of Duende. Lorca encapsulates the idea in this manner: "Seeking the Duende, there is neither map nor discipline. We only know it burns the blood like powdered glass, that it exhausts, rejects all the sweet geometry we understand, that it shatters styles. The arrival of the Duende presupposes a radical change to all the old kinds of form, brings totally unknown and fresh sensations with the qualities of a newly created rose…the Duende charges itself...by means of a of living forms, and clears the way for an escape from the reality that surrounds us. The Duende never repeats itself, any more than the waves of the sea do in a storm. Its most impressive effects appear in the bullring; since it must struggle on the one hand with death, which can destroy it, and on the other with geometry, measure the fundamental basis of the festival. The bull has its own orbit: the toreador his, and between orbit and orbit lies the point of danger, where the vertex of terrible play exists”….
Dramatic? Yes. But within any passion lies drama. The passion must flow through the process, plants and planning to spark your imagination and fire your urge to design. Too often, we think complacently about our work and ultimately can lose the vision that drove us to design in the first place. I think that it is important that every designer find their own genius loci, that white hot center of creativity that puts their design idea in motion…this is your personal “duende”.
What sparks your creativity?
Read the autobiography, The Artful Dodger to get a sense of Nick Bantock’s creative work. (Cover shown here)
