Event Details

See artist Erling Sjovold create a pop-up art installation from branches from Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s compost pile and other found objects.

Garden Gestures — Artist Statement

Trees both inspire and humble my painter’s interest in line and gesture. These branches came from pruned debris here at Ginter Gardens that I then joined to abandoned picture frame stock I recycled from a woodshop. In this case, both forms of wood, weedy and milled, have returned to the garden. These cast-off forms called more attention to their unique qualities in isolation than when performing their service being trees and picture frames. I wanted to retain that impression throughout, and not finesse away their character. My limited woodworking skills ensured against such finesse. Fusing branch and frame in this loose, improvised way reminded me of the negotiations between raw and cultivated states of nature inherent in any garden, and within ourselves. I enjoyed the play of one form leading the other, the organic flowing branch and rigid architectural frame. I floated these gestural pieces as branches often appear suspended against the sky, as if to declare the feeling of a freely drawn mark.

Also be sure to visit University of Richmond student Emma Felt’s floating installation above the water fall in the Asian Valley too.