A CornerStone Visit, Of Course

Of course we needed to visit CornerStone while we were in the area.  It's been written about and the wave of interest has ebbed by now.   It's an outdoor exhibition by twenty or so different landscape architects.  Each LA got a small piece of ground to design as they wished.  Some are wonderful, some not. 

Perhaps I can see what's held up best and what has not.  The pink plastic windmills set on racks of green plastic pipe look yucky.  A New Yorker appears to have done that (surprise!).  The area with a big block of pink-painted concrete in an area intended to look like a miniature golf course for in-the-know intellectuals looks like hell, too.   The blue plastic balls wrapped around the dead tree are fading, though they look better than the pink windmills.  I think the dead tree would probably be more beautiful without them at this point.  Conclusion:  tacky materials don't age well.  I'm glad my camera battery died before I had to take pictures of the windmills and the pink concrete blob.

One project has a wishing wall where messages can be left, and visitors can also write a wish on a piece of mylar tape and tie it to a spiral of metal.  Many of the messages left at the wishing-wall were lighthearted.  They joyfully celebrated the day and the place.  Other wishes were desperately heartfelt and poignant.

Steel walls surround wishes written on silver mylar, left to flutter and sparkle in breeze and sun:


 









That left a lump in my throat.  Beats blue plastic balls, in my opinion.  A garden place can magically open your heart, and this one certainly did.



More CornerStone in future posts.