CHINESE LANTERN FESTIVAL

I never argue the fact that one picture or photograph is worth more than a thousand words. Yesterday’s walk through the Huntsville, Alabama Botanical Garden inspired me to prove that adage through the following photographs, snapped by botanist Victoria Sullivan. This fantastic presentation of “The Wild,” is a lantern festival produced by Hanart Culture, a company whose purpose is to present Chinese art and culture to the world. The visual production shown here focuses on the imaginative art of a traditional Chinese Festival, which falls on the first lunar month of the year, and at which time many types of lanterns decorate the streets in China.

Lantern making originated with the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.). In the initial phases of this art, lanterns were only used for lighting, but they evolved into colorful art forms as seen in the Garden display. Artists utilized bottles, rags, paper, and rayon to create the art, lighting their creations with colored bulbs and moving parts. 

The artist of the peacock shone here created this form from colored medicine bottles. Pieces of china plates, as well as paper and silk were used to make myriad shapes and sizes of wildlife displayed throughout the park. Seventeen vignettes fascinated onlookers, “enchanting in the sunlight” and “magical in the moonlight” as the show was billed. We watched children exclaim and name the wildlife forms, and if they stayed for the nighttime show with music and sound effects (which we didn’t), they must have been further enchanted. My favorite vignette featured the peacock, but I’d have been challenged to award a prize to the most fantastic display.

The Chinese Lantern Show sent me scurrying to Barnes and Noble of Huntsville to hunt for Chinese poetry where I discovered an international anthology entitled A Book of Luminous Things edited by Czeslaw Milosz. I liked Kenneth Rexroth’s translation of Tu Fu’s eighth century poem, “Another Spring:”

White birds over the grey river.

Scarlet flowers on the green hills.

I watch the spring go by and wonder

If I shall ever return home.

Huntsville Botanical Garden has as its mission to blend traditional botanical garden elements, the aesthetic heritage of the region, the conservation of natural resources and a significant thrust into the future.This 112-acre garden also boasts of containing the nation’s largest accredited trillium collection.

Someone such as naturalist Susan Hester Edmunds of New Iberia, Louisiana would find this place and its displays awesome, especially the Master Gardener’s Demonstration Garden maintained by the Master Gardeners of North Alabama. Food produced is donated to Food Bank of North Alabama.

Photographs by Victoria Sullivan 

GARDENS AND ART

Huntsville Botanical Garden Center

I’ve walked through many gardens, accompanied by a botanist, and Huntsville (Alabama ) Botanical Garden is among the world-class gardens I’ve seen. A few days ago, we spent the morning in this garden, viewing what the publicists tout as “the blending of traditional botanical garden elements, the aesthetic heritage of our region, the conservation of natural resources, and a thrust into the future.” This sounds like hype, but we viewed beautiful trails like the Mathews Nature Trail featuring the Holmes Trillium Garden, which is the largest Trillium Collection in the U.S.; the Damson Aquatic Garden featuring lotus and water lilies; and the Children’s Garden which contains eight gardens in one, including a wading pool with a Pollywog Bog.

Skipper on Ixora

Of course, I’m always enchanted with butterfly houses within a garden and the 9,000 sq. ft. structure housing 2,000 butterflies during butterfly season (May-September) seemed to be the highlight for children walking (and running) through the House. A waterfall and pond attracted one small three-year old female whose mother was busy trying to deter the child from taking off her shoes and jumping in. My favorite pond was that occupied by yellow-bellied slider turtles, and I felt sympathy for the three-year old who wanted to wade in for a closer look, turtles being critters that I think bring good will messages. A poem I wrote for my oldest daughter when she was five flashed through my mind. It’s entitled “On Being Needed:”


“Any kind of a pet will do,
we found a turtle hiding in tall grass,
coin-sized as a dime store relic
just daring her to take him in;

Yellow-bellied slider turtle

she has an infant sister
but five years passed before she had,
so any kind of pet will do
to guard the inner differences.
She sleeps now, close to his back,
asks me to baby sit
the small something left behind,
not to shriek the way I do at her;
turtles, absolutely; any pet will do.
For graver reasons she believes
he got lost from the race
just to prove that needing
reigns more important than running;
to the swift, a chase,
getting winded to pull in your head,
to the slow…
becoming the cared for.”

Gardens in Tennessee and Alabama that I’ve seen usually highlight sculptures scattered among natural settings — I was privileged to see Chihuly’s glass sculptures in the Cheekwood Gardens near Nashville, Tennessee a few years ago. The Huntsville Garden features the work of George Sherwood, “Wind, Waves, and Light,” an exhibit of kinetic sculptures that show patterns of movement — wind speed and direction, shades of light interacting with their natural settings. The “Turns,” made of the stainless steel Sherwood uses for his creations, shows the dynamic movement of wind in what could have been a static sculpture; and I stood a long time before another piece entitled “Wind Sphere” that caught the wind’s movement in a silver sphere on a day filled with brilliant sunshine. The interplay of light and wind was stirring and captured the idea of “Wind, Waves, and Light” Sherwood employed for his imaginative creations. The exhibit is an artistic event set among botanical displays that is only one and one-half hours’ drive from our home in Sewanee, Tennessee.

"Turns" created by George Sherwood

Sherwood has degrees in Engineering and Art and has exhibited in Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and many other states in the U.S. He has received several awards for his kinetic sculptures, including the Lillian Heller Curator’s Award, Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood Museum, Stockbridge, MA.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan