Glenfinart Walled Garden is delighted to showcase Kathy Bruce’s magnificent sculpture in all its glory on 10th September at 2pm. The artist will be there and will be more than happy to discuss her work with you. This is an open invitation and we hope to see you there.
Anna Williamson, the guardian and Manager of the magnificent Glenfinart Walled Garden, Ardentinny is celebrated by the artist Kathy Bruce, with a 3.5 meters high willow and bamboo sculpture named after her.
Anna: Joy of the garden is a female figure clutching a flower basket in her left arm and stands at the corner of the orchard in the centre of the site near the garden cabin. The artist designed the structure specifically for this location and fabricated it from the natural materials gleaned from the garden. She cut armfuls of fresh material daily, as needed for the project.
Bruce chose bamboo and willow not only because they were readily available but so the structure would integrate well within this natural setting. The willow is actually anchored into the ground, hence it will propagate. Therefore the work will continue to grow and evolve over time. This is the first time the artist has undertaken this procedure and is hoping that the sculpture will have many years of growth ahead.
This work follows the pattern of previous sculptural works by Kathy Bruce who is producing an ongoing body of environmental sculptural work that she began approximately fifteen years ago. Her structures, made from bamboo and other organic materials, take the form of mythological sea creatures and mother earth maidens; protectors or progenitors of the earth including La Pachamama, Gaia and other deities of land, rivers and seas.
It was Gaia, earth mother from Greek mythology, who was the progenitor of all the gods of the earth, seas, rivers and the heavens above. Her personified image appears to materialize up from the very land she generated and governed. As depicted on ancient Athenian pottery where her form seems to arise from the earth, embodied as a maternal human figure with her out-stretched arms bearing one of her many offspring. Here again at Glenfinart Walled Garden, Gaia-earth mother is personified in the image of Anna growing out of the ground.
The artist is most grateful for the devoted support and assistance she received from all those connected to the garden and the complete creative freedom they allowed her to design what she did without question. She is thrilled to have the opportunity to produce this growing work for the garden, which acknowledges the constant dedication that Anna and her team of volunteers have made to produce such an extraordinary garden sanctuary for all.
Kathy Bruce is an environmental artist based in Dunoon Argyll and she is co-owner, with her husband Alastair Noble, of the art gallery Dunoon MOCA, Dunoon. She received an M.F.A in sculpture from Yale University and a certificate from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her outdoor sculptures explore archetypal female and mythological forms within the context of poetry, literature and the natural environment. Bruce was a Fulbright Hayes Senior Research and Lecturing scholar in Puno Peru in 2012 where she taught environmental art at the University of the Altiplano and re-searched totora reed boat building on Lake Titicaca. Other awards include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship. She has exhibited her work in the UK, USA and many other international venues including Senegal, Taiwan, Denmark, Peru, France, and Canada.
– Ardentinny Community Trust.
