Welcome to the GVAG Blog

A triumphal arch, Roman style, was part of the landscape at Painshill, an early 18th century garden in England.

Ruins and Recoveries

What can we say about 2020? Queen Elizabeth’s Annus Horribilis comes to mind. So does the subject of ruin — personal and business ruin, political ruin and the final ruin, death, which came this year for hundreds of thousands of people, more than we imagined possible when the pandemic began. But, Janus-like, ruins have a…

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Seen at the botanical garden in Sydney, Australia

Tree Hugging for Tree Huggers

Do you know when the phrase ‘tree hugger’ was coined? I didn’t, so I looked it up. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first known use of the term dates from 1965. Other words coined that year: jet lag, mini dress, pop art, teach-in, doo-wop and time traveller. Reading these words, I felt like a time traveller…

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Continuum, Continued

Over the last few weeks, while the weather was remarkably kind, I’ve continued to work on an extension to Timelines, the trail that explores ideas about memory, history and our relationship to the land. I wrote about the initial work on Continuum in my last blog post, almost a month ago.  Since then, lots has happened. We added a…

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This is how the rock looked in 2013, before I started on the trail extension.

Continuum

“There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realization. Ideas must be put to the test. That’s why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas.” Andy Goldsworthy’s words ring true for me. I have more ideas than I can realize, certainly more than I can act on in…

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The Forms are one installation on Timelines, the trail at Glen Villa that explores ideas about history, memory and our relationship to the land.

Autumn Leaves

Walking through the woods recently, I passed this installation, called The Forms.     The colours of the plexiglass shapes stood out from the muted tones around them, attracting me like a magnet. Closer, I noticed leaves scattered on top of them, some haphazardly, some artfully arranged.     The contrast in colours atop the orange…

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