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SPECIAL ISSUE GARDEN
Tanner’s FAT STEP sculpture, 156 x 48 x 120 inches, now in her garden, was originally a focal point of her 2006 solo show at Otis College of Art & Design.
Santa Barbara artist JOAN TANNER is clearly having a moment. Her work is on display in “Summer Nocturne: Works on Paper from the 1970s” at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art until September 23; her solo drawing show, “donottellmewhereibelong” is traveling to its sixth museum venue—the Cressman Center for Visual Arts in Louisville, Kentucky—and she’s part of a group show “Phantom Lim” at the Torrance Art Museum until September 1. But the best place to see Tanner’s art may be in her garden, where several large-scale sculptures—formerly on exhibit at various museums or galleries—are part of a wild landscape. The artist particularly enjoys watching the effect Mother Nature has on her creations. One monumental piece, Fat Step, composed of interior-grade plywood, “now has a patina that almost looks like it’s feathered,” Tanner notes with evident glee. “It’s going to be an homage to age.” Such nonchalance is characteristic of a long and successful career; Tanner, an Indiana native, began exhibiting her art in 1968, and her work resides in numerous private and public collections, including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Getty Center, Harvard University, the New York Public Library, and Kentucky’s Speed Art Museum. L . D . P O R T E R J O A N TA N N E R.C O M
Green onGarden Top
INDOOR-OUTDOOR LIVING reaches new
heights with GREEN ROOFS over a guest house and cabana at a Hope Ranch property.
When the owner of a Hope Ranch residence wanted to renovate a 1948 ranch house, add a guest house and cabana, and somehow increase the flat land on the view side of the luxuriously sloping property, BLACKBIRD ARCHITECTS had the solution: They put green roofs on the smaller, lower buildings, notes Blackbird president Ken Radtkey, extending the land outside the second-story main living area, minimizing the building’s mass and fitting it neatly into the topography. Green roofs have myriad advantages, points out Susan Van Atta of VAN ATTA ASSOCIATES , who landscaped the roofs as well as the rest of the property: They’re quieter, cooler, and help meet
new-construction requirements for limiting water runoff. Using four to eight inches of nondegradable mineral soil, she planted water-saving sedums, Dudleyas, beach strawberry, and flowering sedges that are irrigated with low-precipitation-rate overhead sprays from pop-up nozzles. She extended the same choices to the in-ground landscape, knitting the views seamlessly together. “The project is so successful because it’s open and airy and strengthens the home’s indoor/outdoor relationship,” she says. “A green roof makes that friendlier.” J . T . B BI R D .C O M VA - L A .CO M
PHOTOGRAPH: FAT STEP, MATT STRAKA
Wild at Heart