Art and Nature: Sculpture in the Park

As an avid gardener, and a lifelong sculptor, I simultaneously empathize with and was appalled by Rochelle Delacruz’ opinion piece in the Tribune Herald on Monday March 22, suggesting that art should be kept in museums.

As a gardener, I was drawn to the Big Island many years ago as one of the great natural gardens on the planet. As a child in Africa, I was mesmerized by the acacias and baobabs of the savannahs, the birthplace of humans. The verdant rainforest abutting Victoria Falls, and the jungles of Indonesia, educated me in nature’s diversity.

Eminent naturalist E.O. Wilson suggests that if half of the Earth’s surface were dedicated to untrammelled non-human flora and fauna, climate change could be managed, overpopulation might not produce such pandemics, and the natural diversity of our world would be preserved.

However, as a sculptor I’m reminded - by the beauty of the 25,000 year old Venus of Willendorf, by the otherworldliness of Stonehenge, and by the poignancy of Michelangelo’s David - that we humans have imagined ourselves into nature from the moment we imprinted our hands in clay.

While, in her opinion piece, Rochelle’s broad brush paints a false equivalence between contemporary sculpture and garden gnomes, she makes the very valid point that art in public places requires thought and curation. Lili’uokalani Park itself, her example of unsullied nature, comprises Edo-style gardens considered by many as naturalistic sculptural works.

We frame our living spaces with our gardens, mirroring nature. We carve our towns from untouched forest. We sculpt our utensils and monuments from the rock and clay of the mountains we live on. Sculpture is one of the ways we imagine ourselves into the places we inhabit. 

Art is an expression of our human imagining - living culture. Great sculpture might end up in museums, but it begins in our hands, and discovers its place in our environments. While each gardener might choose her own gnomes, public art is our shared environment, and should be selected by those with expertise, and with consideration for those who host, and are served by our uniquely Hawaiian spaces.