Daily Dose Blogger Bios
He Really Got Me Going!
Artist Robert Irwin blew my mind a decade ago, when I first saw the garden he designed for the Getty Center. Walking down the zig-zag path, listening to the sound of the water playing on the stones as it made its way down to a pool with a maze of azaleas floating in it (Yes! My least favorite plant is one of the central features in my favorite garden of all - and I love that!); my thoughts about what I could and would do as a garden designer were shifting, opening up.
Last Thursday night, he did it again. I attended Robert Irwin's conversation with Michael Govin, the new Director of the L.A. County Museum of Art (formerly of the DIA Center for the Arts), and once again, the boundaries of my practice as a designer have been re-drawn.
Wouldn't our world would be greatly improved by people learning how to think creatively, the way a great artist does? Irwin made the point that most people start things in the middle, not at the beginning - thereby taking a whole set of situations for granted. What if we took nothing for granted? What if we assumed nothing about a particular project at hand, be it an interior design, a garden, a book, a sales pitch, a political campaign, foreign policy? We could deal with our set of agendas and the parameters of the project, and then be free to think up what could be very simple solutions, elegant even - maybe transcendant.
See? I'm spazzing out! The best work gets you excited, and Robert Irwin's works and ideas do it for me. If you don't already know about him, check him out, and please go see the Getty Garden if you're ever in LA - second best is the book, available on Amazon. East Coasters, do yourselves a favor, visit the Dia:Beacon in the Hudson River Valley - Irwin designed the bulk of the project. The grounds are breathtaking.
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