Fern House: A Year in an Artist's Garden - Hardcover

Schenck, Deborah

3.65

17 ratings by Goodreads

9780811828352: Fern House: A Year in an Artist's Garden

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811828352 ISBN 13: 9780811828352

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 2001

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At last, best-selling photographer Deborah Schenck brings her exquisite images to book form. Through her eyes we discover the pleasure found in creating a luxurious garden set against the backdrop of her nineteenth century home in Vermont. Leafing through this extraordinary journal is like watching from a window a forgotten, overgrown patch of land transform into a lush, verdant paradise. She captures with elegance and artistry the seasons, the landscape, and the intimate details of the flora and fauna. Through her signature Polaroid transfers and enchanting illustrations, we see the single, crystallized moments and elements that make gardening a timeless, life-affirming activity. These images, paired with writing on the rewards of time spent with hands in the earth, prove that fertile soil and a fertile imagination create the most exquisite of gardens--and books. Richly evocative, wonderfully inviting, and thoroughly charming, Fern House is a delight for both gardeners and artists alike.

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Review:

Moving into a 19th-century federal brick house in Vermont, artist Deborah Schenck decided to re-create the luxurious English country gardens of her youth at her new home. Through the first year at Fern House, Schenck documented the growth and transformation of her home, gardens, and family. Fern House simply and beautifully illustrates this progression.

Surrounded by dozens of types of ferns (including horsetail, lace-leaf, and the edible fiddlehead), Fern House was just the kind of place Schenck was looking for to settle down in and join a small community. The birth of her second child, coupled with this new home, inspired her to keep a visual journal of the changes during this very special year--and it helped her to balance the daily joys and challenges of motherhood with her artistic passions. "My artwork celebrates the importance of a single image--the portrait that holds all the perfume, color, and detail of the garden in one perfect bloom," she says. "They are quiet images, and they invite people to slow down, to focus and contemplate the small but important details of our world that are so often overlooked." Schenck's images are lovely. Their composition is meticulously planned but appears beautifully natural. She often uses a triptych or paneled approach, creating groups of a series of bright red summer blooms or russet, brown, and gold autumn leaves and nuts. Fern House is a sensuous and charming pleasure that makes you feel that you are taking a moment to relax in a cool, mossy grotto or next to a koi-filled pond. The text, written by Lauri Berkenkamp, is quietly poetic and captures the graceful elegance of Schenck's images. --Dana Van Nest

About the Author:

Deborah Schenck likes to take walks with her husband and her golden retrievers, collecting berries and flowers along the way for use in her beautiful photographs. She was drawn several years ago to the process of "Polaroid transfer", by which a photographi

Lauri Berkenkamp a writer whose work has appeared widely in magazines and newspapers. She lives in Vermont.

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