Tuesday, November 27, 2007

ABC Wednesday - S is for Sculpture

Detail of “Grande Disco” , by Arnaldo Pomodo.

ABC Wednesday S is for Sculpture

If you are here for Wordless Wednesday scroll down to the next post. Please consider joining ABC Wednesdays.
“Kiosque L’Evide” by Jean Dubuffet. 1970-1984. Painted Polyester Resin.

“Grande Disco”, Arnaldo Pomodo.

On Sunday I went to the World Headquarters of PepsiCo to visit the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden. The garden is located in Purchase, New York, 31 miles north of New York City. Pepsi’s headquarters is surrounded by 168 acres of rolling gardens and grass. The same person that designed the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Edward Durrell Stone, designed the buildings in 1970. Three landscape architects designed the grounds, Russell Page, E.D. Stone Jr. (the son of the architect), and Francois Goffinet. The gardens were laid out to showcase the sculpture collection. I had a wonderful visit and I had forgotten how beautiful the garden was since my last visit several years ago. Like I said about the chewing gum business (Wrigley family) when I visited Catalina Island there must be good money in soda!



Now originally I had about ten pictures of the different sculptures to show but I accidentally deleted the 120 photos I took before saving them. This led me on an odyssey to try and recover the files. I eventually had to download ZAR (it’s a free image recovery program) to my wife’s Dell and while the program did recover many of the 400 photos that were erased when I wrote a CD to transfer over to my Mac something was lost and I only got a few of the photos (about 60) in usable condition. Oh well, I really tried and after several crashes and a lot of spinning I decided to go with these pictures. There is no free image recovery program for Mac that I could find. So I guess in this one case Windows is better. Needless to say I would have just junked the pictures if they weren’t for my ABC post. I am sorry I can’t show a lot of the beautiful pieces of art and plants they have at the garden. I may go back next weekend with a better plan.

This is some of what I recovered ☹


Back to the art:

My apologies to the artist whose pieces are posted here and not identified. The pictures I took of the tags didn’t get recovered. Not that you need a plug from me. These pictures were all taken with the Nikon 50mm/1.8. I used the aperture priority mode and let the camera set the shutter speed. I also used some exposure compensation and a circular polarizer on some shots. It is a wonderful lens and it was purposely the only lens I brought on my trip to the garden. The best way to get to know a lens is to use it.




Captions

Stately trees. Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) showing fall color.

I saw that I went over a 100,000 page views last night. Who would have ever thought that. Thanks to everyone, that just goes to show how many people have an interest in gardening, flowers and photography. I have loved all the comments and things I have learned from everyone out there. Keep it coming!

27 comments:

jams o donnell said...

What amazing sculpures. Great shots

Digital Flower Pictures said...

I may not have a computer tomorrow as I am suppose to get it upgraded that is why I am a little early with this post.

SandyCarlson said...

You've inspired me to get in the car with the family and go have a look. These are wonderful, whimsical, fun, fabulous! Thanks for the tour.

i beati said...

fantastic choices sk

Oswegan said...

Cool sculptures.

I like the first one a lot.

~Oswegan

Anonymous said...

thats unique sculpture...Nice!

Anonymous said...

I love that garden! I've always wanted to see it after a snowstorm! Great shots!

Anonymous said...

The pictures you recovered are great, sorry to hear about the loss of the others. But if you look at it this way maybe you were meant to return someday and this was lifes way of telling you to book another visit.

photowannabe said...

Great ABC post. The sculptures are quite lovely.

Mike said...

I absolutely love the first picture. The colours are amazing. I did a Google search for the Grand Disco to get a look at the entire sculpture. I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your photos. It happened to me on holiday last year so I know what it feels like.

Unknown said...

Interesting sculptures, you've captured them very well. I really like to Grand Disco, especially the wide shot.

I too know what it's like to lose photos, so now I make a double-backup, just to be safe. Once you lose photos you really start to be more careful!

Congratulations on your 100,000 pageviews. You are going very well, and have excellent photography. As the pageviews have shown, the viewers come where there are good photos. :)

Cheers, and here's to the next 100,000.

David

Gerald (Ackworth born) said...

after all that I have to say my favourite photo is the one of the fountain.

Digital Flower Pictures said...

Thanks everyone. Losing the pictures wasn't that big a deal, I still have 5,000 other ones :lol: I just wanted to share some of them with my ABC friends.

I am glad I know how to get pictures off a deleted memory card. Turns out the pictures came out on the Dell okay it was the transfer to the Mac that messed up.

Have a Happy Wednesday.

Andrea said...

These are some unique sculptures.

kml said...

They are very unique - especially the first one!

Lilli & Nevada said...

very nice sculptures.

mrsnesbitt said...

Computer problems eh.....boy oh boy do we have them eh! Thanks for taking the time to recover some.

Dx

Pete M said...

These sculptures are truly wonderful, shapes shapes shapes make the world go around, take a look at these 2 of mine.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petermiller/1532698862/in/set-72157602350333987/
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/petermiller/1532699942/in/set-72157602350333987/

Neva said...

What great sculptures! you did an awesome job showing them . Thanks! and congratulations on 10,000 visitors. You are an inspiration with your blog!

Annie said...

Sculpture! I was guessing, on my way over today, that your S would be s Scheflerra but you surprised me. Sculpture is good, very good. I like it, wish I could do it, like to sit and enjoy it.

Jean M Fogle said...

I love the totem ! I just got my new Canon 50mm lens today, I am leaving it alone tonight, need to take a break but hope it will be a nice addition to my lenses.

dot said...

Enjoyed the pictures very much. What interesting looking sculptures!

Chris Kreussling (Flatbush Gardener) said...

The sculpture of seemingly floating steel tubes is by Kenneth Snelson. The structure is an example of a tensegrity, a form which balances compression (the tubes) with tension (the steel cables) and thus doesn't require gravity to hold its shape. It would look the same floating weightless in space. Snelson is the master of this form.

Tensegrities were discovered by Buckminster Fuller. Refinement of this discovery led to his invention of the geodesic dome, for which he is best known. A true geodesic dome (not the plywood and wood make it yourself kit kind) stays up for the same reason a soap bubble holds its shape: it's trying to explode outward, and tension is keeping it in place.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at that.

AVCr8teur said...

Thanks for the tour. I like the totem poles and geyser photos. I've only seen totem poles in Canada and Alaska. Sorry to hear about your lost pictures and imagine your frustration.

Lynette said...

Another great ABC Wednesday post. Congrats.

Digital Flower Pictures said...

Thanks again to the people who visited.

Xris, thanks for the additional information, very interesting. I felt bad I couldn't identify some of the sculptures. Always feel free here to comment on anything, link to anything and write several paragraphs if you want. That is what this space is for.

Thanks again.

Priscilla George said...

These are amazing sculptures! my favorite is grande disco. I never would have known those two pictures where the same sculpture!