Lotusland, California
I arrived at Lotusland, a botanical garden in Montecito, California, as an artist in residence commissioned to create a new beeswax room inspired by the gardens and in tandem with the exhibition Swarm, curated by Nancy Gifford. Lotusland had been the estate of Ganna Walska, an opera singer from the early 20th century who eventually put her creative talents to creating a series of magical gardens – 37 acres of botanical collections, cacti gardens, reflecting pools, lotus ponds and more. Walska was passionate, eccentric, tenacious and had a horticultural flare. Her driving aesthetic must have been excess, repetition, and accumulation as each garden displayed this theatrical abundance.
I was billeted in Walska’s bungalow which was built beside the large mansion and where Walska, when she was alive, preferred to live. I was living in what had been her home, reading her memoir and experiencing and being inspired by her and her collections of plants. As I daily walked the gardens, I felt I must be channeling her energy as I tried to imagine this new sensory architecture.
I was tasked to reimagine the dining room area of the bungalow as a beeswax room. I decided to re-create Walska’s love of repetition by making beeswax succulents in a variety of sizes and natural colours, to carpet the walls with these juicy flowers. The property too was full of tiled fountains, benches and stairways. The flower iconography was everywhere. I was taken specifically by the tin glazed baroque acanthus leaf tile which became my inspiration for a high relief beeswax interpretation and the basis for structure of the installation. Further, I collected lotus pods and from these created 17 different moulds from which I cast several hundred beeswax impressions. All of this was cast in an outdoor studio set up in the courtyard just outside the bungalow. Each day I got up and began melting wax, casting the pieces and adhering the tiles and objects to the walls of the dining room.
This activity was interspersed by glorious walks through the estate, getting lost, discovering new places and finding traces of Ganna Walska at every turn. It was an amazing month of intense work and inspiration, a month feeling transported in time and one I will never forget.
