Cambridge Sculpture Garden, 47 Grand Avenue South, (between Main Street and Concession/Cedar Street), Galt City Centre, Cambridge, ON N1S 2L7.

Spring 2014 - Fall 2016, Opening Reception: May 31, 2014, 2:00-4:00pm

 

Produced by Cambridge Sculpture Garden

Funded by: Ontario Arts Council, Visual Arts Projects Grant

The Cambridge Sculpture Garden provides visitors with a unique opportunity to encounter artworks in an outdoor, landscaped gallery. Operating as responsible stewards of the land, the garden presents a rich diversity of native plants in a pesticide/herbicide free environment. Artists Rebecca Diederichs and Sarah Peebles have created site-specific works for this context, welcoming visitors to engage in intimate and unexpected encounters with nature.

Rebecca Diederichs places delicate, small-scale sculptures throughout the garden, asking audiences to exercise their perceptual faculties as they seek out and discover these surprising works. Initially inspired by intricate assemblages created by Australian Bower Birds, Diederichs insinuates eye-catching structures into the natural bowers of the undergrowth. She incorporates antique English crockery, ribbons and printed fabrics to question relations between natural wilderness and human aesthetics of domesticity and cultivated landscape design.

Sarah Peebles’ Audio Bee Cabinet, Sonic Solitaries, integrates with the natural environment as a home for local pollinating insects. Close inspection of the cabinet will reward viewers with an audio/visual experience of living solitary bees as they use the structure to make their nests. Working in close collaboration with local entomologists, Peebles’ works raises awareness about biodiversity and pollination ecology by providing audiences with an intimate, safe, aesthetically intriguing experience of native bees in their natural habitats.

The Cambridge Sculpture Garden is a not-for-profit organization managed by a group of community volunteers. It is an accessible, outdoor garden open 24 hours a day and 365 days a year on Grand Ave South in Cambridge. It is now illuminated at night thanks to support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the City of Cambridge. The Cambridge Sculpture Garden is home to permanent sculptures by John Marriott, Dave Hind, Peter Bowyer, and Andreas Gehr. It showcases temporary yearlong exhibitions on a regular basis. The sculptures to be exhibited in the Encounter exhibition will function in a way that reflects the garden and nature on many different levels appealing to a broad range of individuals and age groups. The work will extend the community's understanding of contemporary public sculpture and provide a novel experience to those who visit the garden.
This project contributes to the cultural vitality of the city and provides a framework for social engagement integrating cultural with daily life.

Contact:
Judy Major-Girardin
Co-Chair, Cambridge Sculpture Garden
[email protected]
www.cambridgesculpturegarden.ca