Marc Rosenquist's bronze is most prominent in late winter when all the herbaceous perennials and grasses have been burned and cleared away, leaving a flat, largely empty field. Ironically, it becomes even more important in the summer, when the rapid plant growth makes it increasingly hard to see.
As the plants grow around it like a slowly rising flood, its fat, vertical presence becomes the focal point of the garden, a point of reference that plays with one's sense of scale--it's much larger than you think it is--making perception of relative sizes more ambiguous, but at the same time making it easier to judge distances, actually making space more visible. I guess you could say it introduces a perceptual playfulness into the garden.
It's so different from anything else, it exudes a sense of mystery. It seems both alien and at home, dramatically contrasting with the soft plant materials, yet echoing their shapes in permanent form.
The color is very different from the colors of the plants (at this time of year), but it's the same as the color of the house and the stone walls and the bark of the trees pressing in at the edge of the garden.
Mounded leaves of Silphium terebinthinaceum (Prairie dock) and Rudbeckia maxima have similar size and shape, though I think their similarities actually highlight their differences.
Even the lacy verticals of Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) share similar visual resonance with the bronze, though they are certainly very different in form.
Do I go too far if I relate the bronze sculpture to my circle of red logs amid tall cedars (Juniperus virginiana)? I don't think so. If you see curves and lines in the abstract, just about anything in the garden relates to this object. Like musical theme and variations, thematic statement and answer.
Likewise the mounds of Miscanthus, daylilies ...
... the rounded box balls ... and across the path, the more generic mounds of mixed perennials with emerging spikes of Filipendula rubra, Silphium perfoliatum, Salix alba 'britzensis' and Thuja in the background.
... even the purplish color of the Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecrecker' relates to the browns of the sculpture.
Moving away from that central point, the rising path beside the pond goes off into the woodland garden ...
... where a turn back shows you the wide prairie field ...
... and in the middle of it all, Marc's sculpture, still visible from a distance ...
