Frederick Church‘s Olana as photographed from Thomas Cole‘s estate.
Blog
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Olana
Olana, Richard Petrucci 2024 -
You’re Not Alone
I made this video last Fall, 2023. Driving past the suicide prevention sign outside the bridge always engenders a wooden feeling inside me. “Would this actually help someone?”, I think. Would this have helped me? The bridge sits underneath Olana. The site of Frederick Church’s home, above the shore of the Hudson River, looking West. A site of much importance because of what Church saw there, and then painted. A site useful because of what it looked out upon, but only to one man. His paintings then become the image of this place. I wonder how many people drowned in the river during Church’s lifetime? He died in 1900, the bridge finished in 1935. How many people have jumped off the Rip Van Winkle Bridge? I won’t look it up. This video is really about looking. Looking through the frame that has been set up to see a place like Church’s canvas would have. To then walk the bridge to see what couldn’t bee seen until the bridge opened. -
Tactical Maintenance
The subject of this project is the notion of the garden. A place delineated as separate from both untended nature and the artificial structures of civilization, containing human made arrangements of natural materials.
It’s important to distinguish the garden as a humanly delineated space, which is not naturally occurring. Each garden has a tactic of maintenance which cultivates the intended nature and discourages growth of unwanted species, and prevents decay of the grounds themselves.
Is nature to be enjoyed? Is enjoyment a product of our time? Louis XIV felt that wilderness provided no pleasure and that nature had to be arranged by man to be appreciated. The earliest gardens were most likely naturally occurring clearings “…such spots are the gardens of the gods, or of those favoured by the gods, so that they need do no work to keep the place in order.”
The garden provides a controlled space. It is built by humans and embodies culture. A “wild” landscape has it’s own conditions and will continue without human involve- ment. Enjoyment of such a wild place means to accept it, because it was created by numerous consequences beyond any plan. To enjoy a garden is to take pleasure in a person’s work. While some gardens aim to be in conversation with nature, others claim dominance over it.
