In order to understand who the "House Guests" at the Evergreen House are and why they are there, it is necessary to briefly review the history of the house itself.
The Evergreen House was left to the Johns Hopkins University by John Work Garrett in 1942. Garrett and his wife, Alice Warder Garrett, were prominent Baltimoreans and passionate patrons of the arts. Among the most famous artists to spent time at the Evergreen House was Leon Bakst, set and costume designer for the famous Ballet Russe. He expressed his gratitude for the Garretts' patronage by designing, among other gifts, a theater in the Evergreen House with original scenery. Alice Garrett established the Evergreen House Foundation in 1952 in order to share her family's collections with "lovers of music, art, and beautiful things" and to further their enthusiasm for patronage. In the Garrett's spirit of collecting art and inviting artists to their home, the Evergreen House Museum annually invites an artist to draw from the resources of the Evergreen House to explore new artistic possibilities. The House Guests exhibit, currently on display at the Evergreen House among the other artwork and books collected by the Garretts, features the works of three artists-in-residence from the past two years. Each artist has been inspired by the Evergreen House in unique ways, with fascinating results.
Micki Watanabe, who worked at the Evergreen House in 2003, is intrigued by the different ideas of space as a compact area in which to store objects, ideas and knowledge. She includes books as a type of "space," storage space for human history. As a House Guest, Watanabe spent a good deal of her time in the prized John Work Garrett Library.
Of all the artists represented, the fruits of her labor blend in most seamlessly with the elegant furnishings of the Evergreen House. Having studied Dutch marquetry techniques, she has created beautiful but unobtrusive models using inlaid wood. Her portion of the exhibit, "Objects of Literature," includes a floor plan of the Library of Congress, a model of a book that contains a doll house-sized library, and a desk-like creation entitled "See Johnny Read: Enoch Pratt Canton," inspired by the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.
Patrick Burns, like Watanabe, was drawn to Mr. Garrett's library. However, Burns delved into the rare books - particularly those with detailed sketches of plants and insects - and produced a series of works called the "Evergreen Drawings." Burns experimented with painting and drawing on sandpaper, a highly unusual and abrasive surface on which to create delicate and detailed images. He also worked with stencils and employed the Russian peasant motifs that Leon Bakst used so heavily in his design of the Garretts' theater. Combining his inspiration from the wildlife pictures with themes from the Evergreen House, Burns created a distinctive set of collage-like works.
The painting, "Evergreen Interior," uses one of the windows in Evergreen House as a backdrop while in the foreground a sketch of a winged insect overlaps with a still life of one of the vases from the Garretts' art collection. The work is entirely charcoal gray except for a few yellow panes in the window. Rather than overpowering the drawing, the brilliant yellow intensifies the quiet gray beauty of the rest of the painting, drawing attention to the extraordinary detail of the insect sketch and the unusual shape of the vase. While the use of strong primary colors is prevalent in Burns' work, he uses color cautiously, only to complement subtler detail. This subtler detail may be a grotesque beetle or a toad, but under close examination the repulsive is revealed as fragile and precious. Although the relevance of Burns' work to Evergreen House may elude first-time visitors to the museum, his art is appealing even without explanation.
Denise Tessin's work, if sometimes harder to grasp, stands uncontested in vitality. An artist deeply influenced by the act of experiencing, one of her focuses while staying at the Evergreen House this past year was the transitory nature of all creations. Much of her work can only be appreciated within this mindset, including her works from "A Day of Interpretive Drawing in the Evergreen House's Bakst Theatre." What could be called "scribbles" of red ink on paper was actually created while listening to a recording of Glenn Gould playing J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations.
Such work is precious as the raw portrayal of the experiences of an artist listening to what is arguably one of the greatest musical works ever composed. In keeping with the Evergreen House's theme and its history, Tessin named her series of projects "Suppressed Desires Party," after a high-society party held in Baltimore in the 1930s. The host, Alice Garrett, invited her guests to come dressed as the person whose life they most wanted to live, be it Charlie Chaplin or Albert Einstein. Although no costumes are involved in Tessin's works, she is throwing her own artistic party on the Evergreen House grounds, scattering inflatable toys on the front yard and setting up memorials to torn-down greenhouses. As a tribute to the Garretts' love of collecting, she has created "Things Do Get Better With Age," a series of wooden panels that feature a substance called Stickem Special that has caused airborne leaves and dirt to collect on the surface. On the back of some of the panels, where she has listed her media, she assures visitors that beef liver is included in the mix.
While a visit to the Evergreen House Museum is particularly rewarding because of this exhibit, the house itself is reason enough to venture down North Charles Street. Even without a viewing of the golden bathrooms or one of the largest collections of Japanese artifacts in the country, a walk on the grounds in beautiful weather is a stimulating experience. And should you stumble across some unexplained plastic flowers or a shooting range, worry not-instead, be reassured that art is still having a party.
