Living Sculpture...

A friend of mine visited last week from New York City and we took time to explore how Columbus has changed since he lived here previously. One of the spots he had never seen before is The Topiary Park www.topiarygarden.org/ downtown near the old School for the Deaf.  It's a marvel.

To explain it, I think the words of the creator and sculptor are best:

"The Topiary Park is a landscape of a painting of a landscape. ... If an artist can paint a picture of a landscape - art mimicking nature - then why not a sculptor creating a landscape of a work of art - nature mimicking art? The topiary garden is both a work of art and a work of nature. It plays upon the relationships between nature, art and life."

- James T. Mason, sculptor and creator
of the topiary interpretation of George Seurat's
famous painting
A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte

There is a bronze relief of the painting that you can examine while viewing the landscape. How clever is that? The fact that my friend didn't even know about the park was not a huge surprise; I've taken many Columbus residents there and always revel in their usual exclamations of "OH! I didn't know about this. I love it!" 

I love it too.  The yews (Taxus x media) www.learn2grow.com/plants/taxus-x-media/ haven't quite filled out the sculpture frames yet, but the frames for the man & woman in this photo, for example, are actually about 12-15 feet tall!

There is a growing interest in other aspects of "living sculpture" in North America.  The actual sculpture can take the forms of a willow house, sod couch, intricate earth mounds and almost anything that the creators can imagine (and hopefully maintain).  A big proponent of this is my buddy, Marcia Eames-Sheavly, at Cornell University.  If you are interested in this subject, I would highly recommend that you visit the living sculpture website at Cornell for a bounty of information and examples: www.hort.cornell.edu/livingsculpture/

This is a photo of a temporary living sculpture created at Longwood Gardens during the American Horticultural Society's children & youth gardening symposium in 2008.  Marcia and her able assistants from Cornell designed the piece and directed the wonderful, hardworking symposium participants in its creation.

Perhaps various forms of living sculpture could grace the green roofs that are being installed around the country?  Just a thought...