ART IN THE WILD
Exploring nature’s wealth
A single lecture and a scampering squirrel brought Hideki Yamakawa all the way from Japan to the scene of a most magnificent work — his sprawling, structural sculpture Infinite Reoccurrence located on the bank of the North Saskatchewan River southwest of the city.
Made of arrangements of logs, sticks and other deadfall, Yamakawa has created an all-but-anonymous sculpture garden — camouflaged from a distance, ranging in topography and scale from small rings of woven branches around single trees to something that could pass as high-end conceptual architecture if developed by beavers. There is a great ring of sticks halfway down the bank and a river of branches flows toward the actual water.
No ropes, no glue, no nails; it holds itself together entirely.
The installation is about 30 minutes southwest of West Edmonton Mall. To get there, as the crow flies south of Spruce Grove, find and head south on Range Road 275, past Township Road 505 until it arrives at Honeyvale Acres. The site is 250 metres south-southeast of that subdivision sign on crown land.
Yamakawa’s solo show opens Saturday running through, its announcement glibly declares, infinity. Intentionally meant to deteriorate, it runs along more than 500 metres of forest, a thing to see, an event which should linger in memory for a long time.
Born in Saitama, north of Tokyo, 24-year-old Yamakawa has been living for the past year with prolific, multi-scale sculptor Royden Mills and his wife Linda, helping them build their impressive new studio home. Yamakawa first met and approached the Edmontonarea artist after hearing a single presentation by Mills at Sapporo University in Hokkaido.
“I talked to him and said, ‘Can I go to Canada?’” explains Yamakawa.
At the seed stages of his art career, he was interested in seeing life — and art — overseas. So far, he’d been working primarily with steel. “But I just a little bit changed,” he explains, noting the steel is tricky to come by back home. “It was a little difficult, but I didn’t want to give up. So I was looking for other material.”
Once here, he assisted Mills at the University of Alberta and was warmly welcomed into Edmonton’s art scene, meeting curators, artists and public art administrators.
But it was actually a tiny spirit mammal that led Yamakawa to the Eureka! location where he’d soon create this astonishing work. “I thought, ‘Oh, a squirrel,’ and followed it, maybe it had a family, and we came to this place. I saw the beautiful river and decided, ‘Oh! Here!’”
Inspired by natural beauty, Yamakawa worked on the entropic body of sculptures for the good part of two months, often getting up at 7 a.m. and not returning to the Mills’ till past sunset. Most of the work was gathering wood. Besides weaving and arranging, he dug steps down the banks to encourage particular vistas. From one such, you can see almost everything — the main “nest,” the balanced sphere of branches and, looking west, a sort of far-off sentinel. “There are more over there, who knows how many?” he laughs.
Nature provides an obvious material difference than steel, but it’s not necessarily easier. “If I work with steel, I have to buy steel first. With nature, I have to collect it and that’s the most difficult part.” He describes dragging thousands of logs and branches from the surrounding area, getting stuck in the bushes. “‘I can’t move!’” he grins, pantomiming being trapped.
On the steepest rise overlooking both the melting ice of the river and a web of trees he’s laid out, he notes: “Please be careful. I fell down here. Five times.”
In other words, don’t wear sandals or high heels if you come out to the Saturday opening, forecast exceeding 20 C.
Yamakawa’s accompanying ice sculptures made on the river are already long gone. But this is a note the artist wants to sound when anyone considers the entire show.
“All this nature stuff,” he points around at his work, “will become soil. Food for plants. I think everything has a soul. If it passes away, maybe it becomes a soul, maybe born again. I don’t know actually if that’s real, but that idea is in Buddhism, Shinto, Christianity. “And definitely in nature.” Though he wants to live in Canada, perhaps take his masters here at U of A, he’ll be moving back to Japan April 18. (This summer, he’ll
All this nature stuff will become soil. Food for plants. I think everything has a soul.” HIDEKI YAMAKAWA
undertake more sculptural experiments at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota for at least three months.)
As his upward-reaching riverbank piece crumbles and collapses without him, a row of sunflower seeds he planted all the way down to the river might blossom. “In 100 years, I hope all the area is covered in sunflowers!” he laughs as we walk back to Mills’ place.
But, with a shrug: “It’s a place of deer. Please, deer, don’t eat all the sunflowers!”