An Amazing Piece of Art

This was my midterm project in my Artistic Expression course last semester. This was made of homemade play dough. Accompany with this project is an essay.

Here's my Essay

An Amazing Piece of Art

               One of the most prominent competitions here in Montreal is a horticultural art. This year’s 2013 exposition theme is “Land of Hope” where the main objective is to let everyone know the importance of preserving the richness of life on earth and the Mosaiculture were displayed at Montreal Botanical Garden that lasted for three months. These sculptures were created using steel and aluminum forms that were wrapped in a metal mesh, filled with earth and planted with flowers, ivies and grasses to provide textures and colors. Since, I went in the museum late there were only a few that I’ve seen and among of the arts that I totally amazed was “The Man Who Planted Trees”. It was a giant sculpture. This was created by the group of horticulturists in Montreal and a member of Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal, an organization who made the event possible. The sculpture is being honoured to a shepherd in a story who planted trees and bring back the life of the ruined landscape of the abandoned valley in France in the early 20^th century. This amazing piece of art I’ve chosen consists of 800,000 individual plants according to the man I had spoken on the site and the flowers that were planted were mostly in the Alternanthera plants family with different colors from the hat to his back, arms, hands, legs except the neck line and in the middle of the vest which I thought were silver falls and silver mist plants. His beards were Stipa tenuissima plants, I am not really sure but what I am pretty sure, those were grasses.

The actual sculpture at the Botanical Garden Montreal

As I look closely to the giant sculpture I was fascinated every detail and the beauty of it. The elements of arts were widely distributed throughout the creature which provides a jaw-dropping piece of arts. What are the elements of arts? These are the visual component which artists used in order to emphasize their creativity, analyze, communicate and become realistic. 

The elements are;

Ø  Shape – I may say that the sculpture have a dominant patterns since the artists used shaping techniques. It consists of geometrical and irregular figures. Like for example, the hat has circle and cylindrical figure, I can see triangles and rectangle in his arms, straight line and some irregular patterns in some parts.

Ø  Light – Since this was a plant sculpture, the light was being expressed by shiny part of the plants and the plants itself.

Ø  Color – The color of this sculpture were mostly green and mixed with red, yellow and brown.

Ø  Texture – The surface have both soft and rough since the plants used were mostly Alternanthera where in some leaves of this plant has rough and some have smooth.

Ø  Space and mass – It is by default that this sculpture has both space and mass, because these are three dimensional piece of art.

Ø  Line – Pertaining to this element I can say yes I can see lines. The artist emphasized clearly the edges that for me those were lines.

This giant and mounting living artwork was a really beautifully made. The artists or horticulturists who created this huge flower sculpture were trying to convey a message to everyone about the significant in flower gardening aside from promoting great attractions. The group of horticulturist were motivated from the story about the man who planted trees during the 20^th century. They tried to bring back this kind of motivation to everyone that there is nothing impossible if we are determined to do things for the environment. Thoughtful eco-awareness was being imposed and brought as the artist’s skillfully interpreted that our ecosystem is endangered and that we need to protect them by planting more trees and flowers. The horticulturists retell the story through creating this jaw-dropping piece of arts that there’s always hope in everything.

My feeling towards the art was I am really mesmerized when I looked at this giant creature. I can never imagine how much hard work they put in it. The details of this piece were totally awesome and skillfully designed and planted very carefully and thoroughly. I stayed there for at least half an hour, analyzing and relating myself how this creature helped in promoting the theme. Did the artists relay the message correctly? Did the people understand what it meant? I asked two persons who were on site that also fascinated the arts like me about their opinions and we end up of the same feelings, idea and understanding about the art. The art represents hard work, motivation, love and dedication towards the environment.