Fall Blooms and Foliage

New York City may not be the best place to see spectacular autumn leaves, but there are some spots around the city where fall colors are alive in mid-October. The photos of the trees  were taken in Central Park near the Bethesda Terrace while images of the colorful flower beds (mums) were made on Park Avenue. 

"Flower Bed" - a Photography Art Installation by Doreen Kennedy for Art in Odd Places Festival 2011

Flower Bed is a photo-based installation designed to appear in a public park environment. For this year's Art in Odd Places, the installation was at the lawn in the 14th Street Park at 14th Street and 10th Avenue. It was made up of aprox 600 photographic prints, placed upright in the grass to make up a ‘flower bed’ rectangular shape. Unfortunately, the installation was placed not on the actual lawn of the park but on a wood-framed plot. The exhibition took place from October 1 through 9. The idea for the installation began with an earlier piece that the artist did at the Electric Picnic Festival in 2007 ‘1,000 Flowers’. 1,000 flower prints were placed on to the bark surface of trees in a woodland area. While making it she began to think about the everyday action viewing of flowers / plant life in a public park over repeated visits. It's almost nostalgic. The work explores themes of the external environment, time capture and the process of recording time with the use of single or repeated images. The flower images can provide a type of evidence or findings from a location. The recreation of an artificial photo-based ‘Flower Bed’ in a public space aims to surprise the viewer and to reconsider the idea of what art in a public space can be. For more information about the artist, visit her website here.