Double Take
Written by Lorie Dewhirst Porter
Photography by Gerald and George: Mia Kiera Sweeney
Two books published this spring come from the same household, the work of a couple whose achievements are well known on both coasts: artist Gerald Incandela and garden aficionado George Schoellkopf, who split their time between Summerland and Connecticut. Incandela’s photography-based painterly works reside in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Schoellkopf is the founder and creator of Hollister House Garden in Connecticut, a garden property he has nurtured since 1979 that affiliated with the nonprofit Garden Conservancy.
The recent solo show of Incandela’s work at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford provided the impetus for GERALD INCANDELA (12 Candles Press, $52), a monograph on the artist’s oeuvre. The large-format book is packed with glorious images of art created over five decades, showcasing his singular technique of painting developer on photographic paper in the darkroom while using multiple negatives. This groundbreaking method became his trademark in the early 1970s, and he has continued to refine it. James Glisson, the chief curator at Santa Barbara Museum of Art, notes that Incandela’s work “stretches out time for longer than a photograph’s paltry fraction of a second . . . Incandela slows us down to the speed of reading poetry or listening to music.”
In HORTICULTURAL HERETIC ($45), Schoellkopf relates how the classic English gardens of Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, and Hidcote inspired him to become an impassioned self-taught gardener. He dispenses realistic advice for plant lovers gleaned from 40 years of patient trial and error. His tone is that of an enlightened theater director, describing plants as players in an ongoing drama, including a special variety of evening primrose that opens at precisely the same time each evening, providing entertainment for dinner guests. His ongoing struggles with unruly plants—dubbed “swashbuckling thugs”—and frustrations over low-performing but adored prima donna plants are delightfully portrayed, and the book’s lush color photographs of Hollister House Garden belie his self-described amateur gardener status. Both
books are available at Tecolote Book Shop, 1480 E. Valley Rd., Santa Barbara, tecolotebookshop.com
