This year, I lot of the art I’ve been making has been for the house. I’ve painted abstractions on cabinet doors. Other times, I’ve been adding more animals to our ever-growing mural menagerie. Regardless, I’ve been using painting, drawing, and other media to make our house our own. Not everything I’ve been working on is intended for display inside the house though. This past spring, for instance, I completed a set of garden banners to decorate our yard. Let’s take a look!
Garden Banners in Williamsburg
While we were living at the Pointe, I started noticing how many yards featured garden banners in them. I don’t know if it’s a regional thing, or if I just didn’t notice them until now, but Williamsburg is full of yards with little banners in them. They typically consist of a wrought iron pole about 2-3 feet high that gets planted in the garden. The pole has a long arm that can accommodate a cloth banner. Throughout the year, homeowners swap out the banners according to the season. Spring might feature floral imagery, for instance, while fall is replete with pumpkins and autumnal foliage. Puppies and other cute animals aren’t uncommon either.
When we bought our house, the front yard included an empty pole for garden banners. For the first year or so, I more or less ignored it as we prioritized more pressing projects. This year though, I decided to add some banners of our own. Rather than go out and buy any though, I decided to make some.
Creating My Own Garden Banners
In keeping with the seasonal character of the garden banners, I decided to create four banners featuring local imagery demarcating the various seasons. Between years of observation and sketching, I knew I’d have plenty of source material. For the actual banners, I used raw canvas rolls from Michaels. I’d originally gotten them to make a table runner for my sister last Christmas, but I still had two leftover rolls that would work nicely.
To showcase the local seasonal foliage, I decided to combine cyanotype with painting, an approach I first started exploring in Roswell. I started by making the cyanotypes, which took most of the afternoon to rinse and dry. Over the next few weeks, I then painted additions onto the banner to add color and detail to the compositions.
Four Seasons, Williamsburg Style
After about a month of working intermittently, I had four garden banners. I selected imagery I love to draw and paint. For spring, I decided to paint the tulip poplars, as their flowers bloom in April and May. I used giant magnolia blossoms to represent the summer, as they can bloom into July and August. There’s no shortage of colorful foliage in autumn, so I picked a few of my best leaf sketches and rendered them onto the canvas. Finally, I painted one of the turkey feathers my parents gave me last Christmas, as it’s always easier to find shed feathers when there’s less foliage to hide them.
(I’ll admit, I technically cheated a little on that last one because the feathers are from Maine, but we do get turkeys here. My parents have an easier time finding feathers though because they’ve got a group that frequents their backyard meadow.)
As I worked my way through the banners, my compositions became bolder. I painted the turkey feather one first, and it’s got the simplest composition, with the painted feather more or less sitting on top of the cyanotypes. By contrast, the final banner for autumn has blurred the distinction between the foreground and background with the cyanotypes. Painted leaves appear on top of the cyanotypes, as well as behind them. I also blurred the borders of the composition by having leaves break out of the edges of the cyanotype.
Once I finished the banners, I painted the edges with gray to clean them up. I then sealed them with outdoor-grade Modge Podge. It’s not fully waterproof, so on really stormy days I bring the banners inside, but it’s better than nothing. If I ever want to out year-round, I’ll print digital versions of the images printed on cloth.
Reflections on the Garden Banners
This was a fun project to create. Reflecting on the passage of time through seasonal changes is a major part of my creative practice, so these banners fit right in with my interests. I also liked taking a decorative trend I’ve observed for years and turning it into something more personal through the art-making process. I’ve also thinking about doing something more involved with my cyanotypes and painting on canvas, so this was a good opportunity to try that out. Being raw canvas, the surface was rougher than what I’m used to, but it still turned out pretty well.
Best of all, we’ve now got a little more local color in the front yard. We’re still a ways from my long-term goal of replacing the front yard with native plants, but I suppose it’s a start.