Wisconsin Life

How's this looking? Oh, this is going to be really cool. Landscape architect students spend a lot of time designing planters that will never be planted Is that big enough? Gardens that will never be grown. 'Cause that's going to be the basil, where they just drew that line out. So when Robert Holicek and Arianna Netzsky learned the state was holding a competition to design a planter around the Capitol building, they started brainstorming. The big spot for the inspiration came from state symbols. And instead of it just being like, "Oh, here's a pretty design that we could do." We actually really wanted to get involved with the design and have it actually represent something of Wisconsin. Who could be angry with dance? Have you ever seen an angry dancer?

polka music

Once we caught on polka... And just dance is so universal, and their dresses are just so kind of ornate and unique. If you imagine a girl twirling and spinning, her dress will fly up and floop out and make a nice little circle. And that's what also was kind of the inspiration. So we started looking at the different parts of the dress. And then from there the five different parts are the five different plants. Robert grew up in Mequon quite familiar with the music. My mom has literally hundreds of polka records. And there was an accordion in my house growing up. Just don't ask him to dance. Not a dancer here either, no. I don't-can't say that I'm very dance oriented. Arianna has an excuse for not knowing the polka. She grew up in Las Vegas and came to Wisconsin for college, in part because everything was green. So growing up in Las Vegas, it's a desert and it's also suburbia. Arianna says her dad brought her to national parks and the natural world became a part of her, literally in the case of a tattoo of a bristle cone pine tree. I felt that it really synthesized my love for design and art. As the dirt flies and the planter fills up, their design takes shape. The edge of our planter is a really dark color and that's sort of what you see peeking out under the white hem which is abstracted by the white flowers. And it builds from there I guess. It kind of makes it the middle part that everyone looks at with the ribbon kind of ties it together. Then you have the red necklace that contrasts with the crown - the flower crown - at the top. Robert and Arianna know the design won't lead to spontaneous outbursts of polka dancing. Most people just passing by won't get it. But that's ok. I would just take it as a piece of abstract art, I guess, more than anything. And that won't diminish the thrill of seeing their design come to life. It's kind of still hard to believe that it's actually up in there. This was just awesome, because I'm doing-- We did a design that we get to see put in. I was anxious but I was also really happy at the same time.