I was honored to work with Dan Snow, a marvelous stone installation artist/environmental sculptor on a design competition in Bend Oregon. The site is a series of terraces that lead to a science library shared by Oregon State University and Central Oregon Community College. The installation is titled the “Tarriance” and integrates stone cribbing, beautiful found stones and medicinal plants to serve as a metaphor for the dynamic nature of one’s learning experience. Some of what we envision follows:
The use of the medicinal plants in the landscape drives me greatly these days. While the likelihood of them being used for medicine in a place like this is minimal, having their forms and presence positions them more prominently into everyday consciousness. The terraces being broken into three levels provided a great framework for the concept of ascending levels of complexity in the learning process to mirror those ascending levels of complexity in medicinal plant potency and spatial relationships between cribbing, stone and plant material. One of the strengths of this collaboration is how well the structures of hard and soft work together to create a piece – that should it get built – all the meaning aside will just be beautiful.
I hope we win!
