Earth Art

My recent trip to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario provided an interesting exposure to art truly inspired by nature.  This was not art displaying a nature scene on a common medium but art created with nature.  Called the 'Earth Art Exhibit',  12 Earth art installations were scattered over the 2700+ acres of the Royal Botanical Gardens property making the tour of  unique, flourishing gardens, trailing forest and marsh and carefully designed rock gardens an extra special event. 

To better explain the Earth Art concept I'm quoting below from the brochure I received at RBC:

Earth Art - Art in nature, nature in art.  Artists create one-of-a-kind environmental art installations throughout our cultivated gardens and natural lands...

Earth art's root's stretch back to the 1960s with a show at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  Curator Willoughby Sharp invited artists Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Richard Long, David Medalla, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, and Gunther Uecker.  Together these artists created a new style of installation work - earth art. 

Earth art has evolved as an international phenomenon, and over the decades, has become less about concept and more about the aesthetics of integration.  It also involves notions of sustainability and site awareness.  With its Earth Art initiatives - three shows to date - Royal Botanical Gardens brings great knowledge and expertise in working with nature to integrate the sculptures produced during their Earth Art exhibits.

Seeing these insightful artistic displays of nature, some being expressions of our natural world, some depicting the importance of preservation and more, created mind provoking thoughts on how I can be creative on my own property.  Living on many acres of forested land and  a rather huge yard, I'm in the beginning stages of producing my personal one-of-a-kind earth art exhibit. 

Royal Botanical Gardens will have this exhibit on until Thanksgiving (Oct.12).  Click here to be directed to the RBC website and view a short clip on these exhibits.