I don't know if this installation completed just last week (at the same private art gallery near Ottawa where we created the slanted garden last year) is art, or architecture or just a folly. Essentially, I don't think it matters. It's pleasing just to the eye .
A friend of my client who is in the gallery business, saw the photo of it and wrote back - "... So many congrats for commissioning such an elegant, timeless, discreet intervention in the landscape! I look forward to experiencing it in the flesh."
'Timeless' is a positive word . I like it. It transcends fashion and novelty. It speaks of history (real or imagined it doesn't matter) It says to me the stones from the property made their visual resting place, rather than being forgotten with the rest of the dirt when the gallery foundation was excavated.
How can we call it ‘Environment Art', if the available natural material is not valued enough for us to save and create, not just an aesthetically pleasing statement, but one that lasts.
The pile of leftover stones below didn't get buried, they were fitted into another expression of permanence and beauty, creating if you will, a kind of ‘timeless closure’. I don't think any other material than these lovely stones from the property could have been used to create such a harmonious whole/hole - a sunken ‘enclosure’ celebrating the inherent economy and provision of nature.
