Living sculpture - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Living sculpture is any type of sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

that is created with living, growing grass

Grass

Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae family, as well as the sedges and the rushes . The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns ...

es, vine

Vine

A vine in the narrowest sense is the grapevine , but more generally it can refer to any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent, that is to say climbing, stems or runners...

s, plants or tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

s. It can be functional and/or ornamental. There are several different types of living sculpture techniques, including topiary

Topiary

Topiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants, by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, perhaps geometric or fanciful; and the term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. It can be...

(prune plants or train them over frames), sod works (create sculptures using soil and grass or moss), tree shaping (growing designs with living trees) and mowing and crop art (create patterns or pictures with plants or in lawns). Most living sculpture technique requires horticultural

Horticulture

Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...

skills, such as grafting

Grafting

Grafting is a horticultural technique whereby tissues from one plant are inserted into those of another so that the two sets of vascular tissues may join together. This vascular joining is called inosculation...

or pruning

Pruning

Pruning is a horticultural practice involving the selective removal of parts of a plant, such as branches, buds, or roots. Reasons to prune plants include deadwood removal, shaping , improving or maintaining health, reducing risk from falling branches, preparing nursery specimens for...

, to create the art.

History

Sculptors through the ages have traditionally worked with non-living media such as clay, plaster, glass, bronze, or even plastic. Although sculpting plants isn’t a new idea (bonsai

Bonsai

is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers. Similar practices exist in other cultures, including the Chinese tradition of penjing from which the art originated, and the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese hòn non bộ...

or topiary have long historical traditions), its recent rediscovery by artists, horticulturalists, gardeners, and young people has given living sculpture an innovative popularity.

Living sculpture offers a highly appealing blend of art and science. It’s a creative process that gives the sculptor a chance to bring their own unique vision to life (literally!) Creating a living sculpture is also a collaborative process that can bring artistic minds, logistical minds, and scientific minds together. As a team project, creating a living sculpture can be about more than just art or science. A team collaborating to design and build a living sculpture can learn a lot about themselves, each other, and what partnerships are all about - while making a functional and/or ornamental public sculpture in their community.

Topiary

One of the older and more familiar kinds of living sculpture, topiary

Topiary

is the art of growing dense, leafy plants and pruning them into a form, or training them over a frame, to create a three-dimensional object. It relies on pruning and training to give shape to an existing plant. It also can involve training a plant to fill in a form.

Topiary is one type of living sculpture that has gone in and out of favor through the ages. A few historical highlights of its importance and use:

Earliest references of topiary date back to 23-79 A.D.
It was immensely popular in Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

using cypress trees, but after the fall of Rome, topiary fell out of favor for several hundred years.
It returned in medieval times as a way of training fruit plants, and then was again rediscovered during the Italian Renaissance
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

.
The Dutch in the 15th century became intrigued with creating topiary in animal shapes, as did 17th century England; the French preferred creating topiary in geometric designs with strict symmetry.
18th century, topiary fell out of favor again, and a natural look returned.
Victorians
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

brought back topiary, adding in new plants and details.
Topiary spread to North America at Williamsburg, Virginia, around 1690.
As houseplants became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, topiary moved indoors.

Bonsai

is the art of aesthetic miniaturization of trees, or of developing woody or semi-woody plants shaped as trees, by growing them in containers. Cultivation includes techniques for shaping, watering, and repotting in various styles of containers.

Turf and sodworks

Turf- or sod-works are created from grass or moss and soil. This type of art has roots in the Land Art movement (also known as the Earthworks or Earth Art movement) that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During this period, landscape and the work of art began to be viewed as linked. Sculptures were not just placed in the landscape; rather the landscape became the very means of their creation. These works often existed in the open, located well away from communities, and were left to change under natural conditions. Many of the first works were created in the deserts of Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. They did not, or were not meant to last, and now exist only as recordings or photos.

Works made from the earth are changing the way in which people view art, and often are used to promote environmental awareness. These works may be created on waste sites, and may draw attention to land reclamation and urban restoration efforts. Recent earth artists have worked with soil, sod, or moss to create forms that may be intimate and small, or large and multi-acre. They may be cut out of the earth, or formed with soil. They may give a nod to the past, or they may be cutting edge and contemporary in design. Some examples include labyrinths and mazes, animal and human forms, geometric shapes, and furniture.

Tree shaping

Chairs, ladders and other shapes made from living trees are some examples of tree shaping. Some types of tree shaping involve horticultural practices such as weaving, grafting, training, and/or shaping young, living trees into desired shapes.

Creative Mowing and Crop Art

Crop artists plan in advance on paper, and often work with farmers, special equipment, and a diversity of crops to create multi-acre masterpieces that are viewed from the air and are captured via photographs. They draw on a variety of impressionist

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

, surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, and modernist roots in their designs, and some are downright quirky: http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/images/elvis.jpg. Stan Herd is a renowned Crop artist

Crop art

Crop art falls into several different categories, all of which employ land and/or what grows from it to create images.-Seed art:One version of Crop art is also called Seed art, a visual art created in mosaic-style. Mosaic is an ancient technique of making designs, often from bits of tile or...

External links

Living Sculpture

The Cornell Garden-Based Learning Institute's Living Sculpture Website: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/livingsculpture

Lovallo Living Sculpture Turf and Tree Works

Turf or Sod Works

HGTV at Home: Sod Sofas - Landscape architect Greg Tate demonstrates how to build a sod sofa for your lawn
Sprout a Couch: Lawn Furniture for Literalists - Article by Greg Tate in Ready Made Magazine about how to build a sod sofa.

Tree Shaping

Creative Mowing & Crop Art

Stan Herd: Crop Art and Other Earthworks - From 160 acre (0.6474976 km²) plowed portraits to one quarter acre intimate stone designs, artist Stan Herd’s work has become a platform for discussion of mankind's contemporary relationship to the land.
Lawn Striping and Lawn Patterns: How Do They Work? - A good explanation on how lawn striping works and what can be done to increase the lawn striping effect.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Topiary

Bonsai

Turf and sodworks

Tree shaping

Creative Mowing and Crop Art

See also

Further reading

External links