Designing a museum sculpture garden: land, trees, artworks
I’m in the midst of constructing a sculpture garden and installing pieces at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT.
Work began in December 2008 when pines, cedars, hemlocks, and bamboo were transplanted from our Hogpen Hill Farms in Woodbury, CT to the Aldrich Museum garden. We’ve recontoured the land, moved some existing trees, and are now installing pieces.
Here is the newly installed Escaping Flatland on the afternoon after the big snowstorm in late February 2009. This complex artwork arrays 6 pieces consisting of 24 stainless steel plates (14,152kg, 31,200 lbs). Larkin’s Twig is nearby.
Below, this short HD video shows the process of museum installation of Escaping Flatland, constructed from 14,200 kg or 31,200 lbs of stainless steel arranged in 6 elements each with 4 plates of stainless. Compared to other installations, this was eerily quiet since Clovis, our crane expert, used his battery-operated crane (with a really big battery!) to move the plates around. Gone were the usual diesel smoke and engine roar.
Here’s the installation of Larkin’s Twig #2 in the Aldrich Museum sculpture garden. The original piece, LT #1, stayed at home; LT #2, a revised version of #1, was made for the Aldrich show.
Below, from the left: Mike and Bruce from United Concrete, ET and Peter Taylor from Graphics Press, and Clovis, our crane consultant.
Photographs by Andrei Severny.
In the first entry to this thread, we’ve just inserted a new video of the Escaping Flatland installation.
I watched the video at Starbucks, so I had no idea that there was a soundtrack until I watched it a second time. Then my mind completely detached the audio from the video. I had not associated these sounds with an art gallery before. Men working with big steel: big motors and big hollow booming and creaking, clanking and ratcheting.
http://lacmaonfire.blogspot.com/2009/10/beautiful-evidence.html