Splendor in the grass

August 27, 2003 9:59 AM

Mosaiculture. Iconomy's Circus Trees today reminded me of this exhibit in Montreal which bowled me over, and introduced me to a new art form. What is it? As this columnist says, "Floral sculpture doesn’t sound quite glorious enough. Topiary beyond imagination falls short, too. Perhaps tour de force of the landscape artist comes the closest." [more inside]
posted by soyjoy (12 comments total)

Imagine huge parade-float sculptures made not with pastel-colored flower petals, but the rich colors of live, growing plants of different species. Unfortunately, photos can only hint at the outsized spectacle of this art form. Here's Mother Earth from Mosaiculture 2003, but the color is awful - this view of her head gives some idea of what you're missing. And here's a page photos from the 2000-2001 Montreal exhibit. This year's runs through Oct. 6, for anyone who's even remotely close - see this stuff in person if you can!
posted by soyjoy at 10:00 AM on August 27, 2003

I think I would love to go to Montreal this fall, soyjoy. This link is going on my company's (a flower company) newsletter this month - thank you.

Doesn't this remind you of this?
posted by iconomy at 10:24 AM on August 27, 2003

Yeah, and this too. And this, of course. Or even this. See, once you get into iconomy-land, everything seems related somehow.
posted by soyjoy at 10:53 AM on August 27, 2003

I love this! Especially the Mother Earth one - breathtaking. I think more links should be inspired by iconomy!
posted by widdershins at 11:07 AM on August 27, 2003

Writing as a Montrealer, I gotta view Mosaiculture as a distinctly mixed blessing... sure, people seem to enjoy it and it brings in the increasingly important yank greenbacks to our post-industrial ville.

But it's hard to forget it was the cherished baby of our recently deposed mayor, Pierre Bourque, the city's former chief gardener who, while he wasn't lavishing loadsadough on various horticultural boondoggles, was engaging in a weird sinophilia fetish -- including stated admiration for some of the people's republic's more, um, invasive social control initiatives -- two odd, wasteful intentions that came to its logical climax in Montreal building a multi-million dollar flower garden.

In Shanghai.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 1:26 PM on August 27, 2003

(For context, I should have noted that Mr. Bourque did all this while his administration was radically slashing other city programmes that did not feature flora; closing the city libraries in the poor parts of town comes first, and most vividly, to mind.)
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 1:30 PM on August 27, 2003

Aha! I knew there had to be a sinister angle in there somewhere!
posted by soyjoy at 2:26 PM on August 27, 2003

Whoa. Weird. I was just in Montreal last week with me ma and sister. This was about the only real "thing" we did there. I was actually more impressed by the HUGE [grain?] silo that sits right next to the garden. [Visible on the right in this picture iconomy linked]. I thought it was fantastic, my mom was aghast.
posted by slipperywhenwet at 4:19 PM on August 27, 2003

Something really cool about the huge silo beside the Mosaiculture site:

It was decommissioned a couple o' years ago but recently taken over by some crazy artist types. They made it into a giant speaker-type thing called the silophone. At its website you can have sounds played into it.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:52 PM on August 27, 2003

cool, soyjoy - thanks!
posted by madamjujujive at 9:32 PM on August 27, 2003

soyjoy, I was looking for a tree link that we had posted on blort to add to iconomy's thread and I did not find it, but I found this controversial topiary tree that I thought would tuck in here nicely ;-)
posted by madamjujujive at 9:58 PM on August 27, 2003

madamjuju - thanks for reminding us of that - now, see, the advantage of mosaiculture over simple topiary is that you could make the head a different color from the shaft. It seems rather poorly articulated as presented in that photo.

Also the nipples, of course.
posted by soyjoy at 7:02 AM on August 28, 2003