In recent weeks, you might have noticed a large art work in the front yard at the Arts Center. Cannon County resident and Vanderbilt Professor of Philosophy, David Wood, who refers to himself as an Earth Artist installed “Soft Time: Heliotrope III” on the front hill overlooking 70S.
Heliotrope is a construction bearing witness to our total dependence on the sun, and the need to reaffirm that relation in new ways. “Folded over the bank at the Arts Center of Cannon County, it shows how we can often adapt to nature rather than force it to conform to our plans” explains Wood.
This is the third version of Heliotrope (the others floated at the University of Richmond, Virginia, and in Centennial Park, Nashville). A sister work is installed on the edge of the Vanderbilt campus ('Awakening'). Another piece will be made in Nijmegen in the Netherlands this summer. He has made larger installations in Australia, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Colorado.
Site works in general date back to the times of prehistoric megaliths, and to native American mound building. In recent times, the concept and construction of Earth Art flourished in the US from the 60s onwards.
Wood has been developing Yellow Bird Sculpture Park in Woodbury over the last several years, inviting other artists to collaborate and inviting the public to participate.
Information courtesy of Neal Appelbaum.