Inner Landscapes: Outer Landscapes is the second installment of Art in the Garden. Here, the garden is transformed into an immersive and interactive experiences of our inner relationship to the outer world through the work of four artists and guided by five selected workshop offerings. 

 

The Zen Garden encourages us to place ourselves in front of its elements and understand them as aspects of a larger story. The arrangement and care given to each natural sculpture invites us into a place of peace so that we might begin a contemplation on what i means to exist autonomously within the natural world -  one part of a much bigger moving machine. We are individuals existing within ecosystems and communities, and here on Kaua’i we are a small community existing in the middle of a vast ocean. The idea for the exhibition comes from much of what the Zen Garden already says about itself.

 

It is within the same spirit that each of the selected artists have created work which acutely identifies their own inner landscape. How is that we each take up space? What does it uniquely look like for you or for me? And how much of our autonomy is a guise? It is my hope that to install the artwork within the garden itself takes this a step further - challenging the structure of a gallery. Our inner and outer worlds become more literal. The opportunity to invite workshop facilitators into the space of an art exhibition plays further into the practice of contemplation. Going physically deeper inwards into the garden, as find each artist hidden away in their own crevices of the garden, we also engage in workshop practices which contemplatively invite us inward to ourselves. 

 

Thank you to the artists, workshop leaders, and everyone involved in helping to create this temporary space - which lives only for one day, much like the fleeting moments of our internal worlds.