Sunday Morning in Central Park

Hello all!  Well, the reason for all these Encore posts lately is that I'm travelling for work again, and I feel so lucky to be back in New York.  We're in the midst of a flurry of new creations at the moment - I hope you caught my Fossil Fish over at PaperArtsy - so I thought I'd throw in some travelling photos while I'm at it too.

I'll fill you in on some of my adventures in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong at some point when I've got a bit more time, and New York will definitely need some more attention (I know, sorry... how lucky am I?!), but I don't want to become a travelogue, so I'll try to space it out over the next couple of months.












For now, I wanted to share the wonderful time I had rambling around Central Park a couple of Sunday mornings ago (it was the 10th April, but I've not had much time for post-writing).  I had to be at the theatre for midday that day, but it was such a glorious spring morning that I couldn't let it go to waste.









I think I mentioned in my 2014 A View of New York post my huge admiration for the vision and ambition shown by the planners of Manhattan's grid in 1811, when the city population was comparatively tiny, and all living just on the southernmost tip of the island.

But, as the plan was put into practice and their brilliantly-conceived grid started to fill up, they realised they hadn't allowed for enough green space, enough democratic space for all New Yorkers to gather, and so they altered their plans.









Some of the gridblocks intended for buildings would instead be preserved as parkland.

Yes, there were some necessary evictions from the sparsely populated area of city-owned land which they selected for their Central Park... 












... but what a statement of intent to take such a vast area of what could have been hugely profitable business or residential land and turn it into a park, with free entry for all.












And what a park!  With such vistas, and beautifully thought-out landscaping...  On top of the huge earth-moving, the lake-digging, and the planting involved, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, whose design won the the 1858 competition, included no fewer than 36 bridges, each one different.













And it's wonderful to be here in springtime too - it's just going to get lovelier over the next couple of weeks...











... though the blossom is already pretty special.  Forgive me, I can't resist a bit of blossom!

  

There's art in the park too - plenty of it.  I was only there for a couple of hours, so saw only the tiniest portion of the whole park and the sculptural treasures it offers, but I delighted in this wonderful bronze of Alice at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

You have to grab your photo quickly if you want the sculpture to take centre stage - people like to sit on those mushrooms to have their photos taken.

As well as art and sculpture, there are formal sports areas, softball pitches and tennis courts, restaurants and cafes, paddling ponds and boating lakes (and a model boat lake, look!) as well as a large reservoir (with a 1.58 mile running track around it), bridle paths for horses, miles of trails to walk, playgrounds for children - not to mention the zoo and the famous horse-drawn coaches seen in so many films and television programmes.













Okay, but a park is a park, so what makes this one so special?  Of course part of the excitement is in the juxtaposition of rural and urban - gleaming steel soaring above the trees in places...















... or when some of the more ornate buildings appear from amongst the tree tops...














... the extraordinary architectural fantasies seeming like fairytale castles hidden in the depths of a vast magical forest.












But it's also about the sheer scale of the place (it is 2.5 miles long, and more than half a mile wide, making a more than six-mile perimeter).  As you can see from these photos, even on a sunny spring morning (okay, it was cold!), you can easily escape the crowds if you want to.











And I think what I find particularly special is the fact that, as well as the obviously landscaped vistas, the manicured lawns and well-kept sports grounds, they also tried to create areas to echo the wild, rugged landscape of Manhattan before the city existed.

It's perfectly possible to get properly lost and find yourself in a rural wilderness, especially in the wonderfully rugged Ramble, where the rocky paths and wild scrubland make it hard to comprehend that you are actually in the middle of one of the busiest cities on earth.

Just look and listen to this little video clip... the centre of New York?  Really?!  (I've not tried uploading a video before, so I hope it works for you.)






The Ramble is also one of the most-visited birdwatching sites in the United States, and I saw some amazing birds - a Northern Cardinal who sat and sang to me for a while (here's my very poor photo of him, but all Tim Holtz fans know what a cardinal looks like!); a startlingly electric blue Blue Jay with flashes of white; some beautiful dark birds whose heads gleamed blue-green in the sunlight (it seems they must have been Common Grackles, but there's nothing common about them in real life, I promise you).







There are lots and lots of these orange-chested American Robins, busy with their springtime courtships.  And there was also what I think was a Bay-breasted Warbler - though there are several yellowish warblers, so it could have been one of the others.   I'm no expert, by the way... I looked them all up afterwards on this fantastic photo database of Central Park Birds.  I can see I shall have to go back to spot some more!










Because they deal with such a lot of people, the birds are mostly pretty unperturbed at the approach of a human, so they'll sit still and stay put so that you can get much closer than you might expect.  The same goes for the squirrels, of course, who - if you so much as chirrup at them - will come over to see if you've any food on offer!









And, for me, probably the biggest draw of all is that there are some simply magnificent trees...

I hope you've enjoyed this tour of just a small part of Central Park.  The weather is being very typically April at the moment, but if we get some more fine days, I will definitely be spending some more time there.  I hope that by the time I come home at the beginning of May the trees will be turning a bit greener - that vivid fresh green of early spring leaves is one of my favourite things in the world.

As I said, there are a couple more new projects on their way here at Words and Pictures, but for now I'll wish you happy crafting and see you soon!

I have all my life been considering distant effects and sacrificing immediate success and applause to that of the future.  In laying out Central Park we determined to think of no result to be realised in less than forty years.

Frederick Law Olmsted (one of the two designers of Central Park)

The great white pear tree dropped with dew from leaves

And blossom, under heavens of happy blue.

From Songs with Preludes by Jean Ingelow

A View of New York

Hello all - it's a non-crafty post today!  I'm just coming to the end of a quick flit to the UK.  There were some work dates I couldn't shift when the New York job came up, plus it gave me the chance to go to the Andy Skinner workshop which was postponed from July - yippee!!

I'm so happy the new workshop date coincided with these couple of weeks.  So I get to do some mixed media work on Saturday and then off to the airport at the crack of dawn on Sunday for another month in New York.  It's a hard life, but someone's gotta do it...

I'm sorry I haven't found much time for visiting lately, or even for sharing my New York adventures.  The job I do requires full immersion - no surprise that I didn't even discover crafting until I went freelance! - and I know I'm incredibly lucky to find such creative stimulation in my work life.  Sadly, it doesn't leave much time or energy over for anything else… but I'm here with a few photos today.

My pictures don't include the conventional views of NYC; those photos of gleaming skyscrapers and the Stature of Liberty have all been done already many times over, and so much better than I could.


And rather than hit the conventional tourist trails on my Sundays off, I've usually just set off to walk the streets and simply encounter whatever I encountered.



So this is a personal journey… a more idiosyncratic tour around some of the things which have caught my attention.

For one thing, I've become obsessed with trying to capture echoes of New York's history.  If you've seen my new Pinterest board, Old New York, you'll know where/when I'd really like to visit!

For much of the time, we've been rehearsing on Washington Square - you can imagine that delights me, with its literary heritage.










I love the brownstones - the four and five storey houses and apartment blocks built in the 1800s - and have spent many hours on my Sundays off wandering the streets of Greenwich Village and the lower East and West Sides.










The leafy streets offer a respite from the bustle of uptown New York, and you find stoops covered with beautiful pot plants - the closest most New Yorkers get to having a garden of their own, I guess.











I'm always in search of buildings with a bit more character and a bit more history about them (if you look past the chichi renovations…).  Click on the photos for a closer view.

What can I say?  I'm just not a steel and glass kind of person - but anybody who's a regular here at Words and Pictures could probably have guessed that!







I'm hugely taken with the fire escapes…
















… something about the industrial look and the iron against the walls, and those dramatic diagonals.











There were some really fantastic balconies and stairways on some of the theatres.  Just check out those street lamps too.








I remain in awe of the vision and ambition which led to the planning of the vast grid which starts part way up the island.

It's a plan which envisaged a metropolis of millions covering the whole of Manhattan - and this was in 1811, when the actual population was barely 100,000, taking up only the southern-most tip of the otherwise ruggedly rural island.

Now, from the higgledy-piggledy downtown streets of the early period, everything straightens up into right-angled streets and avenues.









It means you get these incredible vistas that enable you to see from one side of the island to the other or, it sometimes seems, almost the whole length of the island along the avenues.

It suddenly gives real meaning to a song like "On the Sunny Side of the Street"...







I spent half a day wandering the High Line - created to give New Yorkers another outdoor space.

They've converted the disused elevated railway tracks into a walkway-come-nature reserve.  The whole thing is a couple of storeys above street level.

There's beautiful planting along its whole length (more than 20 city blocks)…













… grassy areas to sit…














... and water features (that dark area is trickling water - enough for kids to splash in before it disappears down the grille)…





… there are various types of seating along the way...

… and - being New York - places to get something to eat and drink (I had the most delicious spiced pear ice lolly!)...





… as well as views over the Hudson River.














And all the time you have this extraordinary juxtaposition of nature and urban architecture …













…and the sense of being raised above the streets, yet still dwarfed by the buildings.














There are meadow grasses jutting out over roads (spot the yellow cab!)…











… and plants alongside rusting railway tracks.














Here's about as touristy as this tour gets: at one point you get a view across the grasses and rooftops to the Empire State Building.











And if you look right in the centre of this picture… yup, that's the Statue of Liberty there in the distance!

I will admit to being a little in love with her.  On my commute (sometimes necessary depending on where we're rehearsing) across the East River, you get a great view of her, standing out in front of the soaring buildings of the financial district, and there's something very moving about her - valiantly standing her ground, yet so very tiny compared to the vast Atlantic in one direction and the huge metropolis behind her.





There were couples and families who'd clearly come to spend the day with picnics and newspapers.

It wouldn't suit me to have to sit in such close proximity with other people, not to mention the thousands strolling past - not my idea of relaxation - but I suppose when you live in a city this populous and busy, you learn to make your peace with the congestion of humanity.






I'm a hermit by nature, so while it's fantastic to get to spend time in this buzzing, inspirational city, I couldn't do it forever!  I was really lucky to get a few seconds people-free to capture this shady birch bower.

The High Line is another example of New York's capacity to realise its ambitions - a vision, a statement of intent, made into reality - well worth a visit if you're ever in the city.








For my first five weeks in New York, I was lucky enough to be living less than five minutes walk from the corner of Central Park.

These fantastic stone figures were outside one of the office buildings on my walk to the subway each day.










I finally remembered to take my camera with me and take a photo of them on my last morning in that apartment.  The layers of stone are just beautiful.













There were also these great tiles to admire in the subway station itself.  At some stations the tile work dates back to 1904, the very first subway openings.  These are from the 1930s.











When I return on Sunday, I'll be staying in Brooklyn - so I get the fantastic double of the Manhattan experience and the Brooklyn experience… as I say - it's a hard life.













As many of you know, I spent a lovely day browsing flea markets and antique stores with the wonderful Marjie Kemper.  We found a couple of extraordinary things along the way…

She did much better than me at taking pictures of the two of us - I never remember to get the camera out for people!








I hope to tempt her to the Brooklyn Flea when I get back.  It's literally two minutes walk from where I'm staying, so I'll try to take some photos then.

I'm also still hoping against hope that I might be able to go to her class at the Ink Pad on my last day in New York in November… it'll depend on how the show is looking by then.







One day I did remember the camera for was the People's Climate March on 21st September.  It was amazing to be part of the hordes marching through the streets… though if truth be told, I did very little actual marching.

As you can see, there were some lovely banners and costumes around.








I was there for two and half hours and by that point my part of the march hadn't even set off… 

There were just so many people stretching along the route of the march that where we were, nearer the back, we simply couldn't move.  I'm afraid I started to find the crowds and the noise a little overwhelming.










As I beat a retreat, I found part of the reason why we hadn't started to move… This is the road to my apartment, not even part of the march route, just a filler street jammed with people still filtering into the march.

It was the same in street after street alongside the route - more and more people trying to join in, and singing and chanting and cheering as they waited.





Oh, and on one of my meanderings I found maybe the best shop window display ever!  I hope that through the reflections you can see some of the fabulous vintage details - musical instruments and all (yes, that is an old honky tonk piano in the background).  Well done, Ralph Lauren!

So, a very partial view of New York - and really only the tip of the iceberg as far as my wanderings and work go (the theatre I'm working in is here, if you missed that link, and the play I'm on is Tamburlaine - very gory, and politically a very hot potato given it's 425 years old), but since so many of you have been kind enough to ask about it all, I thought it was about time to fill you in a bit!  I hope you enjoyed it…

I'm certainly enjoying New York itself far more than I'd expected.  I'm not a city-type, but there's no doubting the ferocious energy of NYC - it's infectious…  I can't wait to get back there on Sunday.

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Hope you all have a great weekend!

The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.
E.B.White

Silence?  What can New York - noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York - have to do with silence?  Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool - who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose… of silence?
Walt Whitman