MANY THAKS TO MICHAEL SHAW, CURATOR OF BURGHLEY SCULPTURE GARDENS

I would like to publicly thank artist Mike Shaw (http://www.michaelshaw.org/) who for several years has been curating the yearly Sculpture Garden exhibition at Burghley House in Stamford. Not only has been doing a great job so far as well as making his own amazing art, but he has been a great help hands on in installing my work and welcoming me to site.
While I was assembling my bags he has been digging holes to cement the work, it took almost 2 days to set everything up.

 Unfortunately 4 days later wind and rain worked on bending my trees that soon were all reclining down touching the ground. That made me realize that a 12mm rebar is not strong enough for my bags. I think that we needed 16mm ones to prevent the disaster and another hard day of work for Mike and his assistant Anthony. As much as I am all for change and all my work leaves intentionally and unconsciously plenty of room for disasters to happen, it is difficult to be brave enough to courageously share disaster with an audience. At the moment I still fear that it would be perceived as failure from my part to deliver a proper artwork. Personally I see lots of beauty in the bended trees and feel strangely drawn towards those awquard deformed creatures, that inspire more thoughts than possibly the original intended one could.
So while I am still working at my confidence to resolve the future of my art making, Mike and Anthony will try to resuscitate the work by planting another rebar right next to each tree to strengthen their trunks and reinforce them back up straight.
This is the first time that I have experienced rebar behaving this way. In the past I have been using it quite a bit, although it always was covered by a copper or plastic pipe.
The function of the rebar is not only to hold in place and give shape to bags, but also to be flexible enough so that together with the rest of all the other components of the sculpture will animate the work inducing a natural kinetic action that needs no electricity and no power but is sensitive to the outdoor natural elements instead and inn the end behaves like a real tree would.