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| Homegrown art (Spring 2006) |
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Bobbi Adams makes her garden her medium
By Charles Johnson
Bobbi Adams views her backyard garden with the eye and soul of an artist. On a sultry summer morning, she picks her way across it, bloom to bloom, color to color, plant to plant, looking for just the right mixture of nature’s beauty to rev up her own creativity, which she turns into unique art. “The garden influences my art. They’re both my passions. I was always into plants. Both my grandmothers were wonderful gardeners. I never put the two together until the last 15 years, though,” Adams says.
Now she makes paper from the various flowers and plants of the garden, along with other things she finds, like wasp nests. Then she retreats to her studio in Bishopville, S.C., and turns that paper into collages.
“I was strictly a painter. Then, through the South Carolina Artist in Residence program, I met a woman who was an artist and a papermaker. She showed me how to make paper and I was fascinated and started playing with it. I had no plans for it other than to make crafts for me. Then I started pushing the envelope and realized I could get interesting colors and textures depending on the type of plant the paper comes from,” she says.
Before long, she realized she’d found the perfect artistic medium for her gifts. She could combine art with her love for nature.
Everything connects
“It’s a very spiritual experience for me. I now can connect the
garden, the earth, and the art to my hands. The garden is my muse,” she says. “I look around and say, ‘that’s an interesting-looking plant material,’ and then I see if I can make paper from it.”
She’s done it successfully with many plants and flowers ranging from daffodils and marigolds to iris leaves, centipede grass, flax, river oats, pine straw, lemongrass, and kudzu. Each has its own unique colors and textures. “Then I make the collage with different types of paper, leaves and things in it. I’m painting with paper. Most of this paper also has cotton in it, which is from the area.”
Master gardener
Adams is active in South Carolina’s Master Gardener program, which lets her share her love for plants with others. “I enjoy speaking about gardening and working with people so they can produce more beautiful gardens themselves. The Master Gardener program is a great way to get interested volunteers involved with the people of the community,” she says. She calls the garden at her own home, where she’s lived 30 years, “chaotic.”
“Nature itself is chaotic. Nothing lines up. I like things to grow where they happen to grow. I let Queen Anne’s Lace grow where it comes up. I think natural things are more beautiful than things in rows,” she says.
In her garden, you’ll find vegetables like tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, lettuce, and Swiss chard growing among flowering plants, and in pots. With tomatoes, particularly, she tends to like heirloom varieties due to their enhanced flavor and connection to the past. If birds and other wild creatures feast on a bit of her garden, that’s fine with her.
“My backyard is a certified national wildlife habitat, which is done through National Wildlife Magazine. Many kinds of birds migrate through here. I have a lot of bird feeders out in winter and count birds at a certain period of time each week and turn the count in to a Cornell University Web site, and just say here’s what I saw this week,” she says. “I wanted a yard that appealed to birds. I also have rabbits, glass lizards, black snakes, garter snakes. They’re no problem,” she says.
In fact, it was the birth of what has become the world’s largest rodeo. The NHSRA’s 57th summer spectacular, held in July 2005 at Gillette, Wyo., attracted competitors from 40 U.S. states, some traveling from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii. Five Canadian provinces were represented, along with a national team from Australia.
The annual event is so big that its numbers nearly numb the mind. More than 1,500 contestants found their way to the Cam-Plex facility at the edge of Gillette, along with their 1,850 horses. The sprawling 1,100-acre compound housed approximately 5,000 people camping in everything from deluxe RVs to tents. In order to zip around from stalls
to grandstands to campground, some families rented golf carts. More than 350 of these carts, many decorated with state flags, signs, or words of encouragement, droned along paths from daylight until dark.
And most significantly, more than 800 adult volunteers handled every detail, from checking in horses to directing traffic, so that the whole event went off smoothly.
Numbers in each event were staggering as well. There were 182 cowgirls in the barrel racing event, for example, while 175 cowboys came to town for calf roping. The number of contestants is so large that it takes six days, from Monday through Saturday, and twelve performances (morning and evening) just to complete the first two go-rounds of the rodeo. The top 20 contestants then compete in a Sunday short-go to determine the national champions.
The pace of activity during the week makes a beehive look like a retirement home. Contestants rise before dawn to handle chores and get lined up at practice arenas. Between rodeo sessions are all kinds of activities, from volleyball competitions to a knowledge bowl to a rifle shooting competition at a target range. Many contestants also are campaigning for a spot in the organization’s student government. And after each evening session is a dance that draws a thousand or so of the contestants who still have enough energy to keep up with the beat. By week’s end, kids (and parents) are taking advantage of any opportunity to catch a quick nap
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