Client: Pedvale Open-Air Art Museum

Overview

Ainavas Galds – Landscape Table
Cast iron, steel, granite boulders
60” x 236” x 157.5”
Iron.Stone Symposium
Pedvāle Open-Air Art Museum, Latvia
2014

United States Embassy, Latvia
State Culture Capital Foundation, Latvia
Talsi Municipality, Latvia
APDC Research Grant, St. Catherine University, Minnesota
Starseed Foundation, Oregon

Goals

Landscape Table (Ainavas Galds) is a meditation on landscape and the effects of our appetite for resources. The table is 20’ x 4’ at surface and 3’ high, with legs and surface forms cast in iron. The construction of the table armature is steel. The refinery-imaged casting was formed out of paper and cardboard tubes, beverage bottles and household food boxes, which were removed or directly burned out in sand molds – leaving carbon residues and effects on all. All of the materials we use are resources; iron, stone, steel, oil, gas, food goods, etc. and our landscapes are the storehouses. I am interested in the connections between the materials of art construction and the materials of industrial construction and the connections between our daily lives and petro-chemical landscapes.

Process

Nine artists/ artist teams were selected to participate in the Iron.Stone Symposium at Pedvale Open-Air Art Museum in May/ June 2014. The emphasis of the symposium was large-scale cast iron and stone works integrated within the glaciated landscape of Pedvale located in central Latvia. Artists worked independently and collaboratively during two large iron pours that were part of the symposium as well as in consultation with the artistic director and founder of the sculpture park, Ojars Feldbergs.