UPB Summer Plantings Inspired by Artists
By Kimberly Marcott Weinberg
Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing
Artists Monet, Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe were inspired by flowers, but Bob Harris, facilities worker and gardener at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, is inspired by the artists.
This year, Harris has designed the flower beds at Pitt-Bradford with an artistic influence in mind. Each major planting is inspired by the work of an artist: Monet, Van Gogh, Titian (he wanted to throw in a Renaissance painter), Georgia O’Keeffe and Picasso.
It’s not the first year his beds have had a scholarly theme. They’ve been based on the colors of ancient Egypt (complete with plexiglass pyramid), mimicked Victorian carpet patterns and reproduced the Minotaur’s Labyrinth on the Greek island of Crete.
This theme, he said, reflects his interest in and envy of painters. Plus, he’s got art in the family – a wife who loves art history and a daughter who’s a mixed media artist in New Mexico.
The Monet bed will be the campus’s largest in front of the Hanley Library and reflect a period at the end of the artist’s life when he was going blind and planted a large numbers of white flowers at his own home in Givenchy France.
The white bed will use angelonia, lantana and snow princess studded with spots of indigo blue. The campus fountain will have white water lilies, of course.
In front of Swarts Hall will be Harris’s tribute to Van Gogh, using red and golden shades. Miniature sunflowers will evoke the painter’s famous subject while frustrating the campus’s many chipmunks. Other flowers include tiger eye – a type of black-eyed Susan – and gold lantana.
Along the edges will be columns of Mexican burning bush that will turn red in the fall. Harris said his daughter reminded him that Van Gogh always painted tall, columnar plants in his own paintings.
Traveling in time across the Bromeley Quadrangle, the bed in front of Fisher Hall will be filled with Titian reds such as red salvia, verbena and amaranthus, which he said looks like a tall poinsettia.
In front of the Frame-Westerberg Commons, Harris will plant calla lilies like those famously painted by O’Keeffe, tall, bright canna lilies and miniature hibiscus.
Plantings near the Harriett B. Wick Chapel will reflect Picasso’s blue period with black and blue salvia, blue heliotrope and blue verbena. Harris tried to incorporate the planes of Picasso’s work by using different heights of plantings.
He said the beds should be in full bloom by July.
Pictured, Bob Harris, facilities worker and gardener at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, planting a bed of flowers inspired by the works of Vincent VanGogh.
Photo by Alan Hancock
Remember, you can listen to "Around the Home" with Bob Harris at 8:30 a.m. Saturdays on 1490 WESB.
The news leader of the Twin Tiers ...
since 1947
Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing
Artists Monet, Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe were inspired by flowers, but Bob Harris, facilities worker and gardener at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, is inspired by the artists.
This year, Harris has designed the flower beds at Pitt-Bradford with an artistic influence in mind. Each major planting is inspired by the work of an artist: Monet, Van Gogh, Titian (he wanted to throw in a Renaissance painter), Georgia O’Keeffe and Picasso.
It’s not the first year his beds have had a scholarly theme. They’ve been based on the colors of ancient Egypt (complete with plexiglass pyramid), mimicked Victorian carpet patterns and reproduced the Minotaur’s Labyrinth on the Greek island of Crete.This theme, he said, reflects his interest in and envy of painters. Plus, he’s got art in the family – a wife who loves art history and a daughter who’s a mixed media artist in New Mexico.
The Monet bed will be the campus’s largest in front of the Hanley Library and reflect a period at the end of the artist’s life when he was going blind and planted a large numbers of white flowers at his own home in Givenchy France.
The white bed will use angelonia, lantana and snow princess studded with spots of indigo blue. The campus fountain will have white water lilies, of course.
In front of Swarts Hall will be Harris’s tribute to Van Gogh, using red and golden shades. Miniature sunflowers will evoke the painter’s famous subject while frustrating the campus’s many chipmunks. Other flowers include tiger eye – a type of black-eyed Susan – and gold lantana.
Along the edges will be columns of Mexican burning bush that will turn red in the fall. Harris said his daughter reminded him that Van Gogh always painted tall, columnar plants in his own paintings.
Traveling in time across the Bromeley Quadrangle, the bed in front of Fisher Hall will be filled with Titian reds such as red salvia, verbena and amaranthus, which he said looks like a tall poinsettia.
In front of the Frame-Westerberg Commons, Harris will plant calla lilies like those famously painted by O’Keeffe, tall, bright canna lilies and miniature hibiscus.
Plantings near the Harriett B. Wick Chapel will reflect Picasso’s blue period with black and blue salvia, blue heliotrope and blue verbena. Harris tried to incorporate the planes of Picasso’s work by using different heights of plantings.
He said the beds should be in full bloom by July.
Pictured, Bob Harris, facilities worker and gardener at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, planting a bed of flowers inspired by the works of Vincent VanGogh.
Photo by Alan Hancock
Remember, you can listen to "Around the Home" with Bob Harris at 8:30 a.m. Saturdays on 1490 WESB.
The news leader of the Twin Tiers ...since 1947
.jpg)
Comments