Client: Cleveland Botanical Garden

Overview

The main entrance to Cleveland Botanical Garden is about to get a new sculpture by noted California artist Troy Corliss. The Campsey-Stauffer Gateway Garden, the public plaza whose native Ohio and other important plantings extend a green embrace to Garden visitors and passers-by alike, is the soon-to-be home of "Sprouting Seeds," Corliss's latest major, large-scale installation. Corliss has been creating both provocative, context-driven public art and critically acclaimed smaller scale sculpture for fifteen years, and was selected for the project as the result of an extensive national search.

Goals

"Sprouting Seeds" is a large, ambitious work that transforms the look of the Garden's entrance and announces to visitors that they have arrived at a place where plants hold a privileged place. The sculpture consists of five free-standing structures positioned randomly on the grassy mound at the entrance to the Gateway Garden. Stainless steel sprouts emerge out of four of five diamond-shaped terrazzo seeds; each of the seeds is about 4 feet tall, while the sprouting shapes vary in height and length up to 22 feet. The sprouts arch, spiral and branch as they propagate from the seeds. Dissimilar from the others, one of the terrazzo seeds hosts a flowering-cap also constructed of stainless steel.

Process

"After spending time at the Garden, it became clear to me that the work needed to be a thing of discovery, something into which visitors can enter and immerse themselves. To signify the botanical world, I wanted to create a series of sculptural forms that are entirely fluid and organic in their structural design." Corliss is known for creating organic forms designed to interact with the human environment. His previous public art commissions have included;

Additional Information

The sculpture is the gift of longtime Garden supporter and avid gardener Lauretta M. Dennis, DVM.