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Kari Huhtamo Art Foundation seminar
environmental sculpture - Lucien den Arend - ympäristötaide

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ENVIRONMENTAL SCULPTURE lecture - University of Lapland, Rovaniemi - knot-willow circle with whitewashed bands, Dordrecht Municipal Museum, Holland

An exhibition (tien Jonge Dordtse Kunstenaars) in the Dordrecht Municipal Museum, in which I participated in 1972, made it possible for me to realize an idea which I had been contemplating for a while. Here I planted 24 white willow (Salix Alba) trees in a circle so that in time they would slowly close the interspaces and it would not be possible to enter the interior space any more. The white bands were whitewashed to evoke the period in which trees along dark forest roads were marked in order to help travelers orientate themselves in the dark. Especially during the Second World War this was a necessity during the blackouts. I remember seeing these marks as a child a few years after the war when sitting in the backseat of my father's '28 Chevy on his cigar purchasing trips in the Noord-Brabandt countryside where small cigar makers had their workshops. It would be dark on the way back to my fathers cigar store; and I would be sitting between the boxes, in a higher position, watching the headlights beaming in on the white bands on the trees along the rural roads.


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