Editor’s note: In 2005, Montalvo changed its name to Montalvo Arts Center.
Not your traditional landscape artist, Herb Parker redefines nature-based sculpture, bringing a contemporary innovation and vision to the traditional art form that leaves topiary rabbits in the leafy dust. Since the early 1980s, Parker, who is a professor of art at the College of Charleston in North Carolina, has created more than two dozen structures throughout the United States, Canada and Italy, harmonizing the disciplines of art and landscape. Parker’s “grass temples” and “houses made of lawn” function as fun, organic shelters that create, as Parker puts it, “environments for people to interact with.”
Visiting Parker on the site of his piece, “Caracol,” (Spanish for snail) Spark gets a firsthand look at how he turns sod into art. Inspired by his 4-year-old son’s snail collection, “Caracol,” like Parker’s other works, is fashioned almost entirely out of natural materials. Using tightly compacted clay and sand as a base, Parker constructs his nautilus-shaped creation entirely out of sod. Parker says he enjoys working with sod “because it is a living, growing entity” that eventually becomes “a very exciting support.”
Sod is not Parker’s only support — the artist relies on volunteers and assistants to make his art a reality. Although the unveiling of Parker’s pieces is a celebration, Parker admits he gets a little depressed at the end as he says goodbye to his collaborators. “It’s not just an object I’m placing somewhere,” Parker says of his art, “it’s a place I’m building with people.”
Commissioned by the Montalvo Association’s artist in residency program, Parker’s commission marks the launch of a new phase of growth and development for Montalvo that includes the construction of 10 new artist studios. Originally the estate of Senator James Duval Phelan, Villa Montalvo is now the 175-acre home to a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring love of the arts; presenting literary, performing and visual arts; and supporting practicing artists.
Montalvo
villamontalvo.org
Where: 15400 Montalvo Rd., Saratoga
Phone: (408) 961-5800
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