Garden lights up the night for the holidays and more

Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009

The winter solstice ushers in the long winter season of cold weather and early darkness.

Thankfully, our celebration of Christmas, with all its brightly lit trees and wreaths, dazzling ornaments and candles, is a welcome respite to this dreariness. This is the time to rejoice with family and friends and to count our blessings.

Annmarie Garden, as always, celebrates the season with the Garden in Lights — that annual outdoor spectacular of colored lights in a series of vistas of fabulous creatures and symbols of the bay ablaze along the garden paths this month.

But the outdoor splendor is not the only dazzling sight at the garden this year.

"Glow," is the title of the splendid winter exhibition in the Arts building. Thirty-three artists from all over the nation portray some aspect of light in many different mediums, both two- and three-dimensional. The garden's handsome new gallery building is large enough, with its two floors, to showcase many different sizes of art works, including some floor-to-ceiling pieces.

The current show takes full advantage of this grand space, and so the visitor has plenty of room to step back and get the full effect of the larger pieces.

There are too many excellent pieces to describe them all individually, but among these outstanding works are a few sculptures and electronic pieces that leap out and grab the visitors' attention.

Several of the light sculptures are interactive — the viewer is invited, by various means and instructions, to manipulate the work. Among these is an untitled installation, perhaps created by the Garden curatorial staff. On a section of the gallery wall, round plastic stick-on lights — inexpensive fixtures available in hardware and variety stores that give a soft light when the dome is pressed — are arranged in a grid. The domed faces of the lights have been painted in a rainbow of translucent colors. Instructions near the installation invite the viewer to press each light fixture in sequences of the viewer's own design. The effect is something like a cosmic game of tic-tac-toe.

Another installation allows the visitor to make an electronic painting. A large light table on the floor is connected to a computer monitor. By moving special tools — a small cube and a spool-shaped piece — across the light table surface, the viewer changes the colors and shapes and shapes on-screen, in endless different abstract compositions. The viewer can even "own" his work by sending an e-mail to a home computer for screen wallpaper. This entertaining work is titled, "Luma — Touch Expressionist," by Rob Gonsalves of Massachusetts. This viewer made a nice Jackson Pollack abstract to send to her home screen.

Maryland artists are well represented in the show, and the state's coastal waterways have obviously had an effect on many of their artworks.

William Maltesta's work isn't interactive, but it is kinetic and quite eye-catching. It consists of a darkly painted panel as a background for two glass sea nettles. These jellyfish — unlike the live ones that are the bane of our beaches in the summer — look beautiful sculpted in glass. White lights pulsate and flicker up what would be — I'm so not a marine biologist — the jellyfish's alimentary canals. The title of this work is "Stretto and Rubato," musical terms for a fugue and fluctuating tempo.

Don't miss the gallery's second floor works. A huge multi-colored acrylic globe seems to rest on air, although it's supported on a clear acrylic base. It's titled "Dragan," by Vasa Michich, an American born in the former Yugoslavia.

Across from this tour de force is a clever installation by Maryland artist Stephen Gregory. It's a multi-colored painting of fish in geometric diagonal progression across a backlit panel. It may be a witty homage to the surrealist artist M.C. Escher. More fish — living ones, in fact — are components of this installation.

On a table set below the panel a small aquarium of live fish neatly reinforces the title, "Neon Tetras."

A little alcove holds an installation that appears on first sight to be a standard Christmas card tableau, — a fireplace with electric flames, stockings and a child's rocking chair. Then you notice Jerry Hovanec's two large hand-blown glass lamps hanging over the mantel. The shapes are reminiscent of oyster shells, although the pieces are at least two feet in diameter. The colors in the glass are nacreous, delicate sunset pastels.

Before leaving the building, be sure to check out the first floor facilities. The walls of the family restroom are hung with an interactive exhibit of luminescent paintings. This exhibit requires the viewer to use the light switches. With the lights on, the colors of these abstracted pieces don't have much contrast, not enough to make the compositions really comprehensible. With the lights off, the pictures spring into dramatic life, looking like photographs of storms, wild seascapes, nights in a forest, titled appropriately, "Day and Night." This work was created by Debra Weisberg, working in a medium called glow tape.

Big and small, three-dimensional or flat wall pieces, the overall effect of this exhibition is a true festival of the phenomenon of light in all its many forms.

"Glow" will be on view in the Arts Building through Feb. 14, but if you want to see it showcased by the outdoor Christmas light extravaganza, you must go soon.

The Garden in Lights is up until Jan. 2, weather permitting, and is closed only on Dec. 24 and 25.

In addition to all this visual radiance, musical entertainment is featured throughout the holiday season. Go to the Web site at www.annmariegarden.org, or call 410-326-4640 for further information.

Christmas is a magical time to visit Annmarie Garden, but it's an enchanting destination at any season of the year.

The garden's 30 wooded acres are an ideal setting for the many sculptures installed along the path and in the great meadow.

Many of the sculptures have been loaned to Annmarie Garden through a special program of the Smithsonian Institution, giving Calvert residents access to artworks by world-famous 20th century artists.

The local art community also is deeply involved with the garden, not only at the annual Artsfest event, but through the many programs and classes offered during the year. On Jan. 16 through 18, Annmarie Garden invites the community to visit a special exhibit honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr,. presented by Joyce Wellman, a Washington, D.C., artist.

Annmarie Garden is the unique gift bequeathed to the residents of Calvert by Francis and Ann Marie Koenig, donors who loved the county, and wanted the garden to be their memorial.

This time of year, it seems like the best Christmas gift the county could ever hope to receive.

patullberg@comcast.net