Welcome to

 

the cyberspace extension of the internationally acclaimed

Nature-Based Sculpture Program

of the

South Carolina Botanical Garden.

We need your input!

This website, like the sculpture program, is an evolving public collaboration. Please use the comment boxes, contact page, and upload features to share your ideas, experiences, reflections, thoughts, pictures…

Some possible contributions you can make include:

• comment on the website
• rate or reflect on photos in the archives
• contribute pictures, videos, artwork…
• post your stories, ideas, links…

Click here to view an example contribution made by a program participant.

NatureBasedArt.org

This website represents the continually unfolding project that seeks to extend online the community-oriented, experiential, and interactive philosophy of a world renowned nature-based sculpture program. The website is both a multimedia display of the sculpture program’s history and artworks, as well as an opening for additional input, content and expression. Public contributions will shape this space and provide guidance for the design and publication of Anomolies in the Landscape, the current working title for a book about the sculpture program.

Volunteers working on Invisible Operations

Project Background

NatureBasedArt.org expands an extensive ongoing research and documentation project focused on the nature-based sculpture program at the State Botanical Gardens in Clemson, South Carolina. The South Carolina Botanical Garden’s staff has joined with former artists-in-residence and a team of collaborators from Clemson University’s departments of Communication Studies, Landscape Architecture, Art, and the Office of Public Affairs to produce a series of publications geared toward academic study and public outreach. Development of the website has been assisted by a funding grant from Clemson University’s Humanities Advancement Board and research assistants supported by the Department of Communication Studies. Other aspects of this research collaboration include: a large participant observation study, development of a collaboratively produced book, collection and cataloging of a document and photographic archive, and research presentation and publication.

Click here to visit the South Carolina Botanical Garden’s page.

 

Devotion of the Sunflower

Sculpture Program

Featured in publications including Smithsonian, Sculpture, Landscape Architecture, Southern Living, Elle (Italian), The Daily Telegraph (London), Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, and Public Garden, the 15 nature-based sculptures of the South Carolina Botanical Garden (SCBG) are creative interventions developed with local, natural materials to suit their separate, unique sites. Since its inception in 1995, the SCBG’s sculpture program has worked with artists of national and international prominence to create a world-renowned collection of nature-based, site-specific sculptures. John Grande, the most prolific writer on the subject of nature-based art, describes the program as the “prime example of the ephemeral sculpture garden,” noting that it “is one of the largest permanent sites devoted to art in the land in eastern North America. It is a living laboratory of natural and human-built structures.”

 

Sittin’ Pretty