Stone’s throw
Cornerstone Gardens, Sonoma (California)
Landscape is represented in traditional garden art through allegories or as realistic miniatures.
We are inverting the process of miniaturisation by isolating a stone from its original environment and expanding its scale to the point that it becomes itself a landscape.
Similarly, to some experiences in pop art an elementary object is blown to surreal dimensions. In our case it is not a familiar and mass-produced object, instead it is an arbitrarily chosen but unique element of a specific landscape, a beach on the Mediterranean.
This process begins with the stone being singled out from the many stones forming that particular landscape. Its
decontextualisation and placement on a urban lawn, is a necessary intermediate step to define its identity. The following manipulation transforms it into a space that will be experienced by visitors. ‘Informed’ through images that depict the stone in its original and transitory environment the visitors close the conceptual circle by living actively and emotionally the site.
The “opening” theme of the festival has a double reference with our garden-installation. A physically one is represented by planted holes in the stone, breaking like ‘life pockets’ its otherwise lifeless surface. A more abstract parallel can be found by the visitor who opens his mind in this imaginary voyage through space and time.