The Garden Study series is, in the spirit of Alexander Von Humboldt’s pioneering work, an effort to credit the imagery that has shaped the Western view of land and wilderness. However, whereas Humboldt sought to explore the last horizons of the globe in an effort to make an “inventory of the world,” [1] the Garden Studies series is an editorial inventory of the history of land depiction and its relationship to geography and land treatment. The Garden Study series is part of my ongoing investigation of creation mythology, natural history, cosmogony, the history of landscape painting, and the relevance of land depiction in contemporary culture. The Garden Study drawing series relates to a larger series of assemblage sculptures entitled Terra Reverentia, and is meant as a kind of compliment series. The Garden Studies are drawn over the pages of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Each work has a miniature hand-painted landscape—a marginalized view of land—referenced from either the history of landscape painting or imaginary or observed landscapes.

Todd Bartel, Montpelier, August 2004


Rules for Garden Studies
• Draw over Ovid’s Metamorphosis
• Do not read the text/embrace unexpected connections
• Add random markings on each page/each material equals one drawing session
• Each drawing session is separated by time (days, weeks, months, years)
• Add a landscape to each work
• Landscapes can be imagined, observed, interpreted, or appropriated



[1] Jean Clair, Humboldt to Hubble, found in Cosmos: from Romanticism to Avant-garde, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Prestel Verlag, New York, NY, 1999, p. 21