Yard art beauty

Hampden-Baltimore, MD

Getting lost in Baltimore has a certain charm. The well-established neighborhoods are old and sometimes a little shabby, with lush vines and shrubs covering telephone poles and lines, giving them a hidden and forgotten sort of feel. But if you lift up the kudzo, look past the abandoned cars and other unfinished projects in the front yard, you can discover the most unusual, wonderful things lurking, sometimes in full view. It's a trash to treasure sort of thing where discarded, overlooked items get a second chance, a new life, becoming a statement and ultimately an art form.

The following are some of the "neglected beauty" we encountered while trekking through hoods from the west to the east, both city and county. From bathtubs filled with bubble balls in Catonsville (ok I'll confess, it was mine), to rusty salvage yard materials popping up in Hampden, to hand-made mud sculptures in Greenspring Valley-- these yard arty things are not only eye-catching, they are making a statement, usually that "an artist lives here." Or a visionary. Or both. Whatever the case, nature's backdrop against these quirky objects in a place known as "Charm City" gives them a commanding presence that begs for a second glance.

Catonsville, MD

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there. 
 ~George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, 1932

Greenspring Valley, MD

Hampden-Baltimore, MD

In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death.      ~Sam Llewelyn

Hampden-Baltimore, MD

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.    ~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

Charles Village-Baltimore, MD

Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed.    ~Lewis Gannit

Clipper Mills-Baltimore, MD

All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.~Jacques Lipchitz

Charles Village, Baltimore, MD

Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.   ~Paul McCartney

Hampden-Baltimore, MD

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.    ~Auguste Rodin

Catonsville, MD

A garden without its statue is like a sentence without its verb.      ~Joseph W. Beach

Dundalk, MD

Gardens are a form of autobiography.
~Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993

Catonsville, MD

Charles Village, Baltimore, MD

PHOTOS BY C. LANGRALL AND BALANCE PHOTOGRAPHY

"Weirdgardens" Charles Village, Baltimore, MD

3 comments:

The Baltimore Babe said...

Yard art is the best.
August 1, 2008 8:37 AM
John McClellan said...

Wow! Great photos... I love the bathtub and bubbles combo. Trashy enough to make you shake your head-Interesting enough to make you want to knock on the door.
August 3, 2008 9:51 AM
GEWELS said...

Love the mosaic pieces. Now, maybe, after one of my temper tantrums I will have a use for all of the shards left in the aftermath.

Ouch, would hate to pop one of those bubbles in the bath.

August 7, 2008 5:58 AM
Fun Fotos!