A whirlwind of pine needles, a huge bird spreading stone wings, a wooden bridge leading to nowhere … Large-scale installations from natural materials have returned from museums and art galleries to their natural environment. Through the efforts of landscape designers and local residents, a unique open-air gallery has emerged in the vicinity of the French town of Verdun.
The Forest of the Winds is just twenty minutes from Verdun, a small town that grew up on the site of an ancient Gaulish settlement. This region is considered to be purely industrial, but not a single factory chimney is visible on the horizon. Only hills, copses and kilometers of fields cut by streams. A true paradise for hikers and horse riders.
Six years ago, local residents decided to give the forest area of five thousand hectares to the power of landscape design, and since then a special commission annually determines candidates for participation in this unusual project. The earliest “works” in the Forest of Winds date back to 1997. Some, the most fragile, were absorbed by nature after several seasons. But most of these creations have become an integral part of the forest.
- A Thousand and One Moss Reflections by Luc Genar.
- The human silhouette carved into a log fence by the Irishman Tony O’Malley is the gateway to the Forest of Winds. You can walk through them or ride a horse.
- “By mistake” – a bridge leading to nowhere, created by the Pole Maciej Albrykowski.
- Among the trees covered with moss and twined with dense ivy lurked “Rhino-traveler” of the Canadian Roger Gaudreau. It is made of twigs and needles, “packed” in a dense net.
For example, Irishman Tony O’Malley’s “Sylph” is a human silhouette carved into a fence from fir trunks. This installation was conceived by the designer as a symbolic gateway to the infinity of the forest. Volunteers were immediately found who volunteered to help in its creation: in two weeks they dug a trench and dug tree trunks into it.
Glade, stream, forest edge, plain or forest felling – the designers themselves choose the place to create their works. They have the richest material at their disposal: needles, branches, trunks, roots, leaves, streams. About a hundred works of landscape design are a hymn to nature and a warning about the danger that threatens it. A fork, four meters long, carved from a solid trunk and stuck into the base of a beech felled by the storm, appears before your eyes as an allegory of the land-nurse. A rhinoceros is hiding in the thicket – an endangered animal that “migrated” to the Forest of Winds from hot countries and found shelter here. In the depths of the fir forest, tree trunks are cut at an angle and trimmed with mirrors – this is truly a “ray of light in the dark kingdom”!
- The Fork by Robert Jakes.
- “Our cubic meter is in heaven.” This gigantic woodpile was piled up by two women – Stephanie Butier and Françoise Kremel.
- “The Way Up” by German designer Cornelia Konrads. This “stairway to heaven” of branches floating in the air was created in 2001.
- In the clearing in the middle of dense fir trees, the Dane Bo Karberg “built” the trunks according to their height. The cut of each log is trimmed with a mirror, in which the sun is reflected in clear weather.
During the two weeks allotted for the implementation of the idea, the designers spend in close communication with the villagers, forest dwellers (for example, a deer got in the habit of walking to a German designer) and, of course, the forest itself. Away from roads and towns, every sound and smell takes on a special meaning. Everything inspires creativity: the sound of the brook, and the rustle of the wind playing in the dense crowns of oak trees, and the sunbeam brightly illuminating the clearing.
The perception is sharpened. Everything is admirable: the knotty bends of the trunks, and the sculptural interweaving of the roots, and the fragile stems of grass, and the mysterious rustle in the forest thicket. And if the rain catches you by surprise, you can hide under a spreading tree, among the branches of which blackbirds and tits are hiding, and wait for the wind to disperse the clouds …
The ephemeral art of the Forest of Winds shows how fragile the relationship between man and nature is. On these narrow paths you involuntarily feel yourself as a small part of a huge living organism, which, millimeter by millimeter, leaf by leaf, is winning its rights.
- “Essence is Existence” by Korean designer Sho Yonghe. The stone “sarcophagus” he created is intended to preserve the trunks and branches of the fallen trees.
- Luc Genard’s creation is a green ball of wide leaves held together by stems and berries.
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