“By moving in a focused and directed way through the labyrinth, we begin to relax, and our sixth sense becomes heightened.” That’s how the author, a renowned labyrinth-maker and “land artist,” describes the effect of walking the traditional and contemporary labyrinths explored here. Examples range from classic Greek and medieval designs to patterns used in Native American basketry, as well as the author’s distinctive creations, which push the boundaries of the form. Connecting the spiritual aspects of walking the labyrinth to the creative act of construction, the guide offers illustrated instructions for making more than 20 different labyrinths.
Labyrinths for the Spirit: How to Create Your Own Labyrinths for Meditation and Enlightenment
Fresh Pond Reservation, at the northwest edge of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been described as a “landscape loved to death.” Certainly it is a landscape that has been changed by its various uses over the years and one to which Cantabridgeans and Bostonians have felt an intense attachment. Henry James returned to it in his sixties, looking for “some echo of the dreams of youth,” feeling keenly “the pleasure of memory”; a Harvard student of the 1850s fondly remembered skating parties and the chance of “flirtation with some fair-ankled beauty of breezy Boston”; modern residents argue fiercely over dogs being allowed to run free at the reservation and whether soccer or nature is a more valuable experience for Cambridge schoolchildren. In Fresh Pond, Jill Sinclair tells the story of the pond and its surrounding land through photographs, drawings, maps, plans, and an engaging narrative of the pond’s geological, historical, and political ecology.
Fresh Pond has been a Native American hunting and fishing ground; the site of an eighteenth-century hotel offering bowling, food and wine, and impromptu performances by Harvard men; a summer retreat for wealthy Bostonians; a training ground for trench warfare; a location for picnics and festivals for workers and sporting activities for all. The parkland features an Olmsted design, albeit an imperfectly realized one. The pond itself—a natural lake carved out by the retreating Ice Age about 15,000 years ago—was a center of the nineteenth-century ice industry (disparaged by Thoreau, writing about another pond), and still supplies the city of Cambridge with fresh drinking water.
Sinclair’s celebration of a local landscape also alerts us to broader issues—shifts in public attitudes toward nature (is it brutal wilderness or in need of protection?) and water (precious commodity or limitless flow?)—that resonate as we remake our relationship to the landscape.
Fresh Pond: The History of a Cambridge Landscape
As sculptor, draughtsman, photographer, and environmental artist, Mary Miss straddles the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and installation art. Her work moves from the urban bustle of New York, to the vast plains of the American Midwest, to the remote forests of Finland, and has been acclaimed worldwide for its poetry and power. Designed in association with the artist, this exquisitely produced monograph, a comprehensive overview of Miss’s work, features thirty-five color images and over 150 duotone photographs of her projects accompanied by copious drawings by the artist. Architectural historian Daniel Abramson-who has been granted unparalleled access to the artist and her archives-addresses each of her projects in detail. An introduction by the well-known art critic Eleanor Heartney situates Miss in the context of contemporary movements in art. Architecture critic Joseph Giovannini places her work within contemporary design practice. Together, the text and images of Mary Miss provide a remarkable look at the work of this groundbreaking public artist.
Mary Miss