Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Arts Playlist: 'Queen Anne’s Lace Pod'

Queen Anne's Lace Pod
Brandywine River Museum of Art
Queen Anne's Lace Pod

Art meets nature in a new outdoor sculpture at the Brandywine River Museum of Art.

Queen Anne’s Lace Pod is a temporary installation by Virginia-based artist Ian Stabler, who says the exhibit is made entirely of natural materials he found onsite.

In this week’s Arts Playlist, Stabler joins Delaware Public Media’s Kelli Steele to discuss Queen Anne’s Lace Pod

Delaware Public Media's Kelli Steele interviews artists Ian Stabler about Queen Anne’s Lace Pod

Queen Anne’s Lace Pod, modeled after a flower that grows around the museum, is a temporary, site-specific installation by Virginia-based artist Ian Stabler.

“It’s really about how do we inhabit our environment in a more intentional way," Stabler said. "The sculpture itself is made of sticks that were found from the site, all screwed together and it’s huge. I mean it’s 8-feet around and about 16-feet tall.”

"Queen Anne's Lace Pod" in process of being built by artist Ian Stabler
Brandywine River Museum of Art
"Queen Anne's Lace Pod" in process of being built by artist Ian Stabler

Stabler assembled the piece over month and a half last June and July.

“It is built to look like the Queen Anne’s Lace Pod. So the Queen Anne’s Lace flower is a really gorgeous flower that grows in this meadow (Potts Meadow). And when it starts to become a seed-head, it actually closes in on itself and becomes kind of like a ball. So what I did is, I  took that shape and flipped it upside down so the stem is sticking up in the air.”

Stabler says visitors can go inside the “pod” located in Potts Meadow along the Harvey Run Trail in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and people can sit on a bench to enjoy the beauty of the area.

Inside View of "Queen Anne's Lace Pod"
Brandywine River Museum of Art
Inside View of "Queen Anne's Lace Pod"

The exhibit will be on view until next spring.

Stabler’s initial inspiration for the project was a painting by the late artist George “Frolic” Weymouth - Brandywine’s co-founder - titled August, which features a hill covered in Queen Anne’s Lace flowers.

He noted that he sees the design as an homage to both the plant and Weymoth’s enduring legacy at the Brandywine.

Stabler was commissioned by the Brandywine River Museum of Art as part of its ongoing sculptural program inviting artists to explore their responses to the local landscape.

This is the fifth commissioned project in a series that also featured Matthew Jensen’s Alongside Tall Grasses (2014), James Welling’s Gradients (2015), Dylan Gauthier’s
high watermarks (2017), and Kathleen Vance’s Brandywine River (2018).

Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Kelli Steele has over 30 years of experience covering news in Delaware, Baltimore, Winchester, Virginia, Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California.