There was so much to see on those first walks through the garden in October.  I wasn’t sure what  shape this new beeswax architecture  would take.  Yes it would use the room as aramture but what else?  Was it an exercise in pattern or tessellation or would it be a tableau? To be honest Lotusland was inspiration at every turn… too much!    I was astonished at the scope of every eccentric aspect of the estate.  One of my favorites was this  clam shell pool.  It is encrusted at the edges with huge abalone shells and flanked by huge tiered clam shell  fountains spilling into the pool.  There is something simultaneously inviting and menacing  about it and as I said it is one of my favorite places.

then there was the plant life…

these Euphorbia that were pale greeny white and the edges looked like they had been stitched.

 

or the succulents in ornamental urns or carpeting the ground.

imagine an entire garden devoted to blue.

I loved the juicy layers

then there was the cactus that had red velvet dots…

I love polka dots… but these are deadly.

and then there were the tiles…everywhere.

on steps and benches and fountains and

 

 

the fountain at the entrance to the house was my my favorite fountain.  It was the faucet that cinched it for me.

I am not usually one for the Goddess imagery but this one is special.

The water spews from the gills of the dragon while it drips from the Goddesses breasts.

and then there is the slag glass… As story goes like the abalone shells someone came to the estate and spoke to Ganna Walska to see if she was interested in a truck load of slag glass.  This is excess glass that is thrown away after firing in a glass factory.  She immediately took the load and began to edge all the beds in the garden with this blue glass.  It is everywhere.

so much inspiration I didn’t quite know how to narrow it down.  Eventually I came up with four words that described this place.

Excess- Repetition- Accumulation and Transformation

I decided then that I would translate 2 tiles that I had encountered in the garden.  They are purple floral and baroque and I learned today Dutch .

tile #1

tile #2

and I would make a tableau of succulents- a carpet on the wall…

The third element I would cast were  lotus pods.  I wanted to encrust them and edge them the way Walska had encrusted the abalone shells and the slag glass. Somehow too, I was going to incorporate objects, unexpected objects into the walls on the perpendicular similar I think to the way in which the Goddess faucet juts out.

All of course in beeswax- my sensory architectural material

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