Lakedale Sculpture Projects
A few years ago, we realized that with 82 acres of natural beauty, we had an excellent opportunity to create site-specific installations of art. In 2018, three artists created Embark/Embrace, a 180-foot long sculpture that utilizes red cedar and split rail fencing to explore the boundaries erected between man and nature. In 2019, Anthony Heinz May created Frozen Wind. Born of the need to top a 100-foot tree in our Yurt village, Anthony repurposed it into an exceptional work of art. The installation explores the precarious balance between the natural world and the encroaching digital age. Stay tuned for our 2020 installation!
2019 Frozen Wind
The second season of Lakedale’s Sculpture Project series commenced in July with the arrival of artist Anthony Heinz May from Brooklyn, New York. Anthony was one of three artists who worked on last summer’s piece, Embark/Embrace, and we were thrilled when he agreed to return to Lakedale. Over a 2-week period, he completed an amazing piece entitled Frozen Wind in our Yurt Village.
In Anthony’s words, ” Part of the natural beauty of this tree is reconstructed to appear frozen in time, as if a human-made wind swept out across its original form. The gust slices through its core: breaking, fragmenting and pulling pieces of it away similar to how computerized imagery reproduces existence as containable in the grid. In precarious balance between artificiality and the real, this tree captures an essence of modern dilemmas where the beauty of nature is warped by the dawning aesthetic of an omnipresent digital interface.”
After completing Frozen Wind, Anthony, never one to sit still, completed an experiential game for our guests he calls Glitch Sticks. He planted small posts of cubes (from the same tree as Frozen Wind) that are spread out across the property into the landscape. Guests are challenged to find all six, as a means to explore Lakedale’s grounds and interact with nature in a personal way.
2018 Embark/Embrace
The Sculpture
The work begins as a red cedar log felled on its side at the edge of a large body of water. As it extends out from the lake, it explodes into large splintering shards of wood that eventually form into a split-rail fence, meandering and arbitrarily dividing land and water. The temporary transformation of the log into a fence will ultimately return to nature over time. Nature is only contained by nature, not by stewardship and regulation, as humans would prefer. Boundaries are arbitrary, as they signify the division of being and existence, rather than pronouncing the universality found in the natural world. The artists who created the piece are Janet Austin, Shelley Campbell Bogaert, and Anthony Heinz May.
Dimensions 180’ x 20’ x 8’
Natural habitat
One component of Embark/Embrace is the inclusion of hand-cast small bronze animals by artist Janet Austin. The “critters” are all found at Lakedale: western toads, voles, salamanders, snails, snakes, turtles, and beetles. Some are plentiful species, while others are on the verge of disappearing. Tucked into corners of the sculpture and in other areas of the resort, they are an unexpected delight to discover.
Guest experience
Guests are invited to embellish “mushroom cookies” in the Lakedale Activity Tent. Inserting the artwork (onto dowels in pre-drilled holes found at the base of the split-rail fence) further reinforces the collaborative nature of the piece.
