Light your creative fires

Tue., March 28, 2006

The Spokesman-Review

Mark you calendars, folks. On March 29 and April 5, we will have two unique opportunities to light our creative fires just as we start into the garden season when two groups of nationally-renowned artists and garden designers speak at local venues.

William Martin – March 29

Billy Martin is a renegade garden designer and photographer even in Australia, where rules are often just something to be bent and broken. He believes that gardens should reflect where you live and who you are, instead of borrowing from designs and styles from far-off places that have no resemblance to the realities of your weather, plants or time to spend with them.

He contends that the cycle of droughts plaguing various parts of the world, including the American West, are not going to go away. Instead of using stopgap gardening techniques hoping we can go back to our old ways when the rains come, he advocates moving to more sustainable gardening practices that balance the availability of water with plants and design techniques that use the lack of water as a positive instead of a negative. Check out his Web site at www.wigandia.com.

Martin’s garden, Wigandia, is west of Melbourne, Australia, where water is scarce and the soil consists of gritty pumice on the side of an extinct volcano – not the most hospitable place to grow a garden, and not too unlike many places in the Inland Northwest. He will speak at 7 p..m. Wednesday, at CenterPlace, Mairabeau Point, 2426 N. Discovery Place. Tickets are $10 at the door.

George Little, David Lewis – April 5

For sculptors George Little and David Lewis of Bainbridge Island, Wash., garden art takes the form of hand painted concrete leaves that serve as garden focal points, objects for water to drip and flow over and whimsical features that bring an entirely new life and texture to a garden.

In her forward to their recently published book “A Garden Gallery – The Plants, Art and Hardscape of Little and Lewis” (Timber Press, $29.95), Ketzel Levine, National Public Radio’s “Doyenne of Dirt,” says of their garden: “A Little and Lewis garden is a giddy, sacred place where everything can happen, where life is blessed and sweet. Where time stands still and the senses are allowed to wander.”

Their art stands the general concept of garden art on its head and in the process tells us that the art we put in our garden has no boundaries Check out their Web site: www.littleandlewis.com.

Little and Lewis will share their creative genius and process when they speak April 5 at Spokane Community College.

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