Suppose you really can’t draw, but always wished you could…especially when it comes to drawing those gorgeous blooms in your backyard. Well now’s your chance to make your wish come true: Botanical Drawing I is just one of the new summer intensive classes offered by NYBG starting in July. Think of it as a summer camp experience designed for grown-ups.
With the botanical drawing class, in just one week you’ll learn specific techniques for drawing accurately, including professional standards of form, measuring, foreshortening, and perspective. The classes are offered in July (9 through 13) or August (6 through 10), at NYBG and the Midtown Manhattan Center, respectively.
One of the most wonderful native trees in our area is the Shadbush (Amelanchier arborea), which is sometimes called the Serviceberry, Shadblow or Juneberry tree. It’s an all-season beauty, especially in a natural landscape setting, and just one of the many native plants you can learn about in the upcoming class, Gardening with Native Plants.
The small tree features lovely grey bark and showy flowers, as well as terrific berries for pies and gorgeous fall color. But equally beautiful are the stories and folktales that have been associated with this tree for hundreds of years.
One story is that the first settlers in the New England area often planned funeral services at the same time that the tree bloomed. Its blooming was a sign that the ground had thawed sufficiently to be able to dig graves. So the tree became known as the ‘serviceberry tree.’
It’s easy to help the planet and explore your greener side with the NYBG‘s programs. There are loads of Saturday and one-day programs offered at the Midtown Education Center in Manhattan and there’s even outdoor Yoga and Tai Chi offered at the Garden in the Bronx.
It was only a few short months ago that Emily Thompson stood in the White House’s East Room and envisioned the task of “bringing outside in” to create her exciting holiday decor project for the First Family. Now Thompson is sharing some of her inspired creative talents at The New York Botanical Garden. Later this month, she will bring her floral shears to the NYBG’s midtown location, encouraging students to delve into the design elements that embody the forest, bog, and jungle.
Thompson’s work is best known for its sculptural and naturalistic elements as inspired by her native Vermont. Her clients are not only among the internationally famous, such as the Obamas, but include her local Brooklyn friends and restaurants as well. Having studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and earned an MFA in sculpture at UCLA, Thompson eventually moved to New York, where she set up her shop–Emily Thompson Flowers–on Jay Street in Brooklyn’s DUMBO district, one of the city’s premier art havens.
Roberta Rosenthal’s talent with the brush extends well beyond her own canvas. By helming painting courses here at The New York Botanical Garden, her legacy as a botanical painter and an instructor has trickled down to the many burgeoning artists to have studied under her in the last 25 years. But her coursework is far from a paint-by-numbers explainer for weekend hobbyists.
“The more I can get students to ask questions and develop answers for themselves, the more I can expect them to be life-long learners who will continue to develop their artistic skills and understanding,” writes Roberta. Her courses focus not only on technical ability, but on working within a social environment in which critiques from peers and instructors become integral to the process of maturing as an artist.
Walking by the NYBGLibrary Building yesterday, we spotted a huge Red-tailed Hawk as it swooped across the trees and sailed to the top of a giant oak. During the daytime, these hawks are the top avian predators in our area and very impressive to behold (at night, the Great-horned Owls reign supreme). A group of bird watchers on the path gazed upward with large binoculars and telescopes.
Maybe this bird is a distant cousin of Pale Male, the famous Red-tailed Hawk who settled in Manhattan in the 1990s, defying hazardous urban living conditions and continuing to produce young hawks to this day. Or it could be a cousin of last year’s celebrity Red-tailed Hawk, Violet, who enchanted the residents of Washington Square Park in Manhattan before succumbing to a heart condition. Or perhaps it is one of the Garden’s own celebrity hawks, Rose and Vince, or one of their many, many offspring.
Doug Tallamy (Photo courtesy of the University of Delaware)
Doug Tallamy’s lecture started from a basic and logical premise: if you take away the places for wildlife to live and feed, you will lose your wildlife. We are all aware that habitat destruction leads to a loss of species, but very few of us believe that we can make a difference or that we are directly linked to the process. I mean this in a non-judgmental way and from a place of empowerment.
Some of you may think that this is an early case of ‘election fever,’ but alas it is not. Last month I sat in an auditorium and listened to a very convincing and lucid proponent for environmental restoration and species diversity. Regardless of his own political views, with respect to the biome Tallamy is definitely not a democrat. “All plants,” he asserts, “are not created equal in their ability to support wildlife.”
Meet Thomas Christopher, an expert on sustainable gardening practices, who will speak about “The Backyard Revolution” Thursday, March 15, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Thomas Christopher has been covering sustainable gardening practices as a writer and editor for more than 25 years, with articles in nationally-read publications including The New York Times and Martha Stewart Living. He is also a hands-on gardener who has started his own sustainable lawn consulting business, Greener Grasses/Sustainable Lawns, near Middletown, CT.
“I was staggered to learn the area of turf in the United States is as big as Virginia, Connecticut and two-thirds of Rhode Island. Grass is our largest irrigated crop, more than corn,” said Christopher in a recent Chicago Tribune article. “Grasses are a resource-soaking nightmare, but they don’t have to be.”
“Chasing the light” is a phrase you’ll sometimes hear used by visual artists–often photographers and, in a slightly different sense, painters. The importance of illumination defines the form and attitude of what’s captured on canvas. And in the case of Lucy Reitzfeld’s art, it becomes a fundamental theme. Her paintings have centered on a search for “palpable” light, that which strikes the facades of skyscrapers and seems to fall on untouched snow–the instances when light appears to move and morph in such a way that you might reach out and touch it.
Along with Lucy’s husband, Robert Reitzfeld, the creative pair’s unique aesthetics work in complementary contrast, creating impressions from the rural and the urban. But for Lucy, whose work often straddles the line between in-the-field experiences and the insulated creativity of the studio, the methods of crafting are somewhat different. The traditions of the Impressionists and the plein air method are alive and well in her interpretations of the world around her.
Suppose you really can’t draw, but always wished you could…especially when it comes to drawing those gorgeous blooms in your backyard. Well now’s your chance to make your wish come true: Botanical Drawing I is just one of the new summer intensive classes offered by NYBG starting in July. Think of it as a summer camp experience designed for grown-ups.
