The garden rooms of ceramicist Anne Hirondelle
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The shelves in ceramic artist Anne Hirondelle's studio hold tidy rows and clusters of feathers, stones, tiny bird skeletons, nests, pods and cones. Their colors and forms are touchstones for Hirondelle's art, as they were for another artist who collected skulls, rocks, bones, and feathers, Georgia O'Keeffe. The voluptuous, dreamlike imagery of O'Keeffe's paintings couldn't be more distant aesthetically from the subtle, traditional clay vessels crafted by Anne Hirondelle, nor could the two artists' backgrounds be more different. O'Keeffe was born in the Midwest and spent her later life in her beloved New Mexican desert; Hirondelle grew up in Western Oregon and now lives less than a mile from the sea, in Port Townsend, on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Yet for both, the artistic impulse flows from the poetry inherent in natural objects, and the simplicity and purity of these forms are expressed in both women's art, as well as in Hirondelle's garden."
It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things," said O'Keeffe in 1922. Hirondelle has created a hushed, calm, Zen-like oasis of a garden by just such ruthless elimination of anything that doesn't match her strong, simple aesthetic. In her elegantly composed garden, warmed by the onshore flow of moist air from nearby Puget Sound, plants have been selected with as much care as the objects on her studio shelves. Bright colors, showy forms, vivid ornamentation, flash, dash - all these have been avoided in the garden as well as in the studio. Colors are pared down to the subtle and natural, form is pure and sculptural. Richness comes not from elaboration or decoration but from the atmosphere of spaces contained, separate yet flowing. Hirondelle has created a series of garden rooms by dividing space into separate compartments as surely as the molded walls of her ceramic vessels divide space into two distinct parts - volume contained and space remaining outside.
Dividing a garden into rooms with brick walls and solid hedging is a familiar British concept. But such scale and grandeur would be inappropriate to a garden in quaint Port Townsend, so Hirondelle has adopted the concept with a twist. She has cleverly enlarged the spaces of her garden by allowing them to spill out visually from behind hedges, between trees and fences; rather than creating solid barriers, she suggests separation to create distinct atmospheres. A split-rail fence stretches across the grass, but stops short of the edges. You can walk right around the end of the fence as well as see through it. Hirondelle uses this familiar form merely to suggest the division of space. A small grove of birches creates a vertical pattern of white-dappled trunks and a horizontal pattern of shade upon grass. The result of such simple manipulations of space is a garden of serenity.
Tranquility is created in part because of the near-perfection of every plant and every object. Each looks as if Hirondelle had deliberately selected it just for that spot: the lilies, euphorbias and azaleas thrive unshouldered by their neighbors, the little birch trees have plenty of room to grow to full size and their natural shape. "When I choose plants it is like everything else - I just choose what I like and then everything goes together OK because I like it." This philosophy is as deceptively simple as the garden itself, which is straightforward in its forms (mossy fence, hedges, old orchard, birch grove) but complex in emotional resonance. Hirondelle's garden is a place to linger, perhaps take a nap in the little grove of birches, or to pass through the gap in the fence on an Alice-in-Wonderland quest, just to see where it might lead. The fact that the lawn only leads around the corner to the old front porch dilutes the impact of the journey not a bit; it is the chance to pass through that archetypal form, open yet puzzling, that entices and enchants.
Economical of gesture and soft of voice, Hirondelle has a self-possessed, thoughtful manner perhaps bred of solitary hours in the studio and the garden. An unruffled, shiny cap of silver-gray hair cleanly outlines her small face and wide smile. She wears tidy overalls and T-shirts, in the same subdued grays and browns of the wasp nests and pine cones she collects. You'd never take her for a woman who once aspired to become an attorney. Years ago, Hirondelle remarked to a friend, "I'm either going to law school or I'm going to make pots." Her friend responded, "Remember, you can always eat out of pots." Hirondelle had degrees in English and counseling psychology; she'd directed a social agency in Seattle and then in the early '70s, she had decided to go to law school. The first day, she knew she'd made a mistake, but she stuck it out for a year, then quit to begin taking ceramics classes. She had always been drawn to clay's plasticity, its mutability. Then, as now, what intrigued her was creating shape and form from clay rather than adding decoration to the pots. (Nor does she decorate her garden.)
Examine the teapot. Hirondelle uses the traditional rounded, handled shape of a teapot for its symbolic function; her goal is to create forms that appear full, perhaps overflowing, with memories or sensations. "A teapot need not be full of tea to communicate the spirit or ritual of tea," she says. Vessels are the core metaphor in her ceramics, used as a visual link between the past and future. Her ceramic vessels, slightly oversized pieces derived from the forms of traditional functional pots, play with the shaping of space. Uptilted handles or the thrust of a spout are the only elements that disrupt the simple curves of the sensual vessels. Surfaces are bronze, gray or deep brown. She started by working with a variety of glazes, and now her work has evolved into architectural pieces that are exercises in pure form.
When Hirondelle and her husband, Bob Schwiesow, bought their old (circa 1902) farmhouse in a field on the Olympic Peninsula 20 years ago, the garden consisted of a cyclone fence and a vegetable garden with a cherry tree planted right in the center. It is an old garden, flat and grassy, the size of two city lots, in a neighborhood of small houses and big yards. Hirondelle began gardening to create some order, to bring a sense of passage and purpose to the space. She divided the lot into loosely defined "rooms" to make comfortable people-sized dimensions; there's an entry garden, a Zen garden, an orchard, a dining area. Attention to detail, shape and form distinguishes her garden as it does her ceramic art. In the garden you'll find nary a showy dahlia or gazing globe; instead, it's a pine tree limbed up to reveal the curve of its trunk, the swell of a rounded Rodgersia leaf, or the curve of a pot set in a flower bed that catches the eye, creates the meditative, Zen-like atmosphere that draws a visitor into the meditative mood.
Hirondelle quotes poet Stanley Kunitz to explain the importance of gardening in her life. "Gardening for me is the passionate effort to organize a little corner of the earth, which I want to redeem. The wish is to achieve control over your little plot so that it appears beautiful, distinguished - an equivalent of your signature in the natural world.
What Hirondelle describes as her "overwhelming need to order things visually - a three-dimensional ordering" is satisfied in the garden as well as at her potting wheel. This sense of controlling and ordering space, as well as Hirondelle's strong aesthetic preference for the simple and unpretentious, has determined the design and content of the garden. She is drawn to the structure of plants, choosing them for their line and architectural qualities. "I don't care what color they are," she explains, "I just want the leaf." It is very difficult for someone who loves plants to refine choices, to select just a few plants. Hirondelle's ability to pare down to form, to edit, to clearly see each individual element, has allowed her to create a garden of restful open spaces, devoid of overcrowding. Then, too, her precise planting is a result of limited funds: She has needed to wait to divide plants, and to buy trees and shrubs in small sizes.
Although her vessels begin with sketches on paper, she has never drawn plans for her garden, preferring to work it out in the dirt as she goes along. Hirondelle considers not only the space within her garden, but also the space beyond it, taking advantage of the Japanese concept of "borrowed scenery." She prunes an old laurel hedge straight across, just high enough so that it echoes the brick wall of the neighbor's house, forming a pleasing contrast of color and texture. As one looks across the lawn, the eye is drawn into a clear horizontal rhythm of long, low, mossy fences, followed by the higher green hedge, and beyond that a clipped row of red-leafed 'Thundercloud' plum trees. There is superb geometry hidden within the softness of the plantings. The forms of fence, hedge and trees are simple and distinct, varying in texture and color, graduated in height, and repetitious in clean horizontal line.
In an artist's version of the Southern tradition of "pass-along" plants, Hirondelle has traded what she makes for what she can't afford to buy, enjoying the chance to display the metal and ceramic work of other artists that she admires. She collects large ceramic vessels that she sets amidst the plantings, all as subtly colored as if they had grown up from the ground; beige, brown, soft gray, with muted finishes and crackled or rough textures. A dark metal "spirit stick" by artist friend Russell Jaqua punctuates a planting of azaleas and boxwood. Even her light-filled studio, set into the garden, was acquired through trade. Jim Cutler, the Bainbridge Island architect famous for designing Bill Gates's vast home compound on Lake Washington, offered to design the studio he'd heard she wanted in exchange for several pieces of her work. Hirondelle demurred, saying she needed something small and simple enough for her husband to build himself. Cutler persisted, designing a studio that Schwiesow was able to build. It is a beautiful little pitch-roof wooden structure, with paned windows, deep windowsills and plenty of light. Here Hirondelle sketches, throws and fires her ceramics, displays the natural objects from which she derives inspiration, and looks out upon the garden as she works.