Landscape art to float in lake

The wooden sunflower sculpture that has been on the hill outside Boatwright Library for several weeks will be moved into the Westhampton Lake on Saturday.

The sculpture, called "Heliotrope," or "flower that follows the sun," was constructed by the Land Art and Landscape class on March 20 as a culmination of a semester studying different kinds of land art throughout history, said philosophy professor Gary Shapiro, who taught the class with art professor Erling Sjovold.

Heliotrope was designed by David Wood, an environmental artist and philosophy professor at Vanderbilt University. Wood has done land art all over the world, Shapiro said.

"The opportunity came up to invite Wood [to campus] to do work with environmental art, so I thought this was a great idea," Shapiro said.

Wood gave a presentation about land art and helped the class construct Heliotrope, said junior Carolyn Doherty, a member of the class.

The class was divided into three groups to work on the Heliotrope project: publicity, research and construction, Doherty said. The publicity group spread the word about Heliotrope on campus and to the community, the research group studied Wood's previous work, and the construction group provided leadership in the construction process, Doherty said.

Heliotrope is made of forty 16-foot wooden petals in the shape of a sunflower, Shapiro said. Each petal is decorated with ten aluminum foil disks of varying sizes to capture the sunlight, he said.

Construction of Heliotrope on the Boatwright hill involved arranging the petals in a flower shape with even spaces between each petal, joining them together with rope and wire, and staking them in place, said junior Schuyler Swartout, a member of the construction group.

The whole class participated in the construction of Heliotrope, Doherty said. The week of March 15, the class spent about five or six hours each day in the carpentry shop cutting the petals, Shapiro said. The class then transported the petals across campus to the front of Boatwright in preparation to build Heliotrope on Saturday, March 20.

"The day we put it into place was the spring equinox, when day and night are equally long," Shapiro said. "Given that the work is related to the sun, we thought that was an interesting and appropriate time. We completed it at almost the exact time of the equinox -- around 1 p.m."

Heliotrope was vandalized early on the morning of Friday, April 2. "Twenty-two of the petals were put in the lake," Shapiro wrote in an e-mail. "Campus police apprehended three students in the act of moving the petals.

"The work was restored with about four hours of labor on Saturday morning [April 3]."

Joe Boehman, dean of Richmond College, wrote in an e-mail, "We are addressing the issue and I believe the resolution will be a positive one for all involved."

The setback did not alter the plans to move Heliotrope into the lake this Saturday morning, Shapiro said.

The class will deconstruct Heliotrope and reassemble it in the lake. Shapiro said the process would include a combination of boats and wading in the lake. Wood will come to campus to help, Shapiro said.

"Heliotrope will float in the lake, but it will be anchored so it can only go so far and the individual petals will have some movement too," Shapiro said. "When it goes into the lake, the place where it was [in the grass] is going to have what you might call a shadow or its trace.

"The grass will not have grown in the place [Heliotrope] is covering because it has been deprived of light. The grass will grow back eventually but for a while when [Heliotrope] is in the lake you'll be able to see both the work and its shadow on the grass."

This will all be visible from the dining hall, the Commons and the library, Shapiro said.

Heliotrope will be removed from the lake before graduation, Shapiro said. The tentative removal date is May 8.

Shapiro said he hoped Heliotrope, like other works of art, could be "appreciated in itself and for the feelings it provokes."

Contact staff writer Anna Kuta at anna.kuta@richmond.edu