Green, Green Grass of Home

 

After the brief Amtrak ride from Detroit I arrived into the Ann Arbor station and was thrilled to spend a couple of days in a town that I so dearly love and miss.  Outside of my home town of Crockett, Ann Arbor is the town in which I have lived the longest, having spent four years and two degrees at the University of Michigan.  (Note: though I did do four years at Baylor, one of those semesters was spent abroad… sorry Waco! [Actually, I'm not sorry in the least.  It is Waco, after all :-/ ])

Needless to say I had a lot of catching-up/eating to do in a quite a short amount of time. I was fortunate enough to have my old pal and landlord, Larry, pick me up and let me stay at the old house for a couple of nights.  

SUMMIT HOUSE 2012!!  (Incidentally, the house rests at the top of Broadway and is the highest elevated point in Ann Arbor… hence the nickname)

 

There are very few things that I never managed to check off of my "Do in Michigan Before Moving to Texas" list, and visiting Maya Lin's Wave Field was fairly high atop it.  Lin, most famously known for her design of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington D.C., describes the piece as:

…pure poetry. It is a very gentle space that exists on a very human scale. It is a sanctuary, yet it’s playful, and with the changing shadows of the sun, it is completely transformed throughout the day. ‘The Wave Field’ expresses my desire to completely integrate a work with its site, revealing the connectedness of art to landscape, or landscape as art. (from the UM Architecture, Engineering & Construction website)

Commissioned by the Association FXB in memory of Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (‘82 Aerospace Engrg.), and gift of his mother, Countess Albina du Boisrouvray. A pure earth sculpture occupying a 90’ square space and representing a naturally occurring wave pattern [see link above]

 

Even with its close proximity to the school of music and the house I, for some reason, never ventured quite far enough to find it.  Larry admitted himself that in all the years he had lived in Ann Arbor he had yet to visit the field, so I'm glad we both got to see it for the first time!

 

Top image via U of M / Bottom image featuring LARRY!

 

I can't say how grateful I am to Larry for all his kindness and generosity over these last few years.  So glad we got to check out this place together!

 

Artist: Johnny Cash / Album: At Folsom Prison