Growing up on the coast of Maine predisposes me to the life-long habit of fairy house building, and the tendency to pass it along to my children. It’s a curious phenomenon where people of all ages stoop down low to the ground with bits of stone, moss and bark in hand and create fantastic little abodes for imaginary creatures, often on islands, along streams, or under particularly special trees. A bit crazy maybe, but it’s evidence of hope in the landscape.
Whether you spell it Fairy or Faerie, there are all sorts of designs for houses from quick (two-minute jobs) to slow (week-long adventure on a beach), simple to elaborate. As a child (and again as an adult with my kids) I visited and built fairy houses in the Cathedral Woods on Monhegan Island which is the setting for the books written by Tracy Kane. A similar style is celebrated in the Fairy Village and at the Maine Fairy House Festival at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden usually the first weekend in August.
However, all of these are simple structures in comparison to the Faerie Houses built by NY environmental artist Sally J Smith (Greenspirit Arts), who I consider to be the Andy Goldsworthy of the genre. When I stumbled upon photos of her work in a VT gallery a few years ago, I invited her to create a faerie house village as part of the 2009 VT Flower Show that I was designing, which she did magnificently. The VT Flower Show is designed and built by Green Works (VT Nursery and Landscape Association) every other year (the next show is March 2013). It’s a huge effort with stunning results – designed over 18 months and built in four days by over a hundred volunteers, then open for only 3 days and then torn down – talk about impermanent art. Here’s a YouTube video of the faerie village that Sally built at the Flower Show:
Her true gems only last a day and are best seen either in her photographs or as custom pieces. The Eartherials and Spirals are sculptures built from leaves, stone, ice and twigs that reflect the seasons. Some of my favorite pieces are made in the autumn from colorful leaves:
I hope to collaborate with Sally again soon, whether it’s hosting a Faerie Festival or an Eartherial building workshop. Stay tuned.
Here are a few more photos of fairy houses my girls have created over the years, both here at home and when we travel. Tim spends most of our week on the beach in Maine making stone houses with the girls, and on our recent trip to Washington D.C., when the girls just couldn’t handle another museum they asked if they could go outside and build fairy houses under the oaks. Absolutely, I said, there is always room for another fairy house.
Related articles:
http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2009/09/20/fairy-villages-bowerbird-art-other-ambiguous-objects/
The L.A.N.D. Line 