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The Forest Art Project
During the late days of summer a special breed of artist is congregating in Ontario's Cottage Country to engage in artistic activities of a natural kind: they will transform a small part of Haliburton Forest's landscape into a Land Art experience. Under the direction of Reinhard Reitzenstein, seven artists will continue to create on site-specific wilderness art installations along forest trails just north of the Haliburton Forest Base Camp. This major initiative will be developed annually for the next thirty years, and will become known as The Forest Art Project. Admission is free to the general public.

This year's artists include Mary Anne Barkhouse, Gareth Lichty, Robert Wiens, Reinhard Reitzenstein. They will begin work on the 2010 installation at Haliburton Forest on August 5. A public launch (details to be announced) will be held on August 14.

For images from 2009 click here

For images from 2008 click here

What is Land Art?
Artists who have chosen to work outdoors with materials found in the natural environment - such as rocks, trees, leaves, and other vegetation - often refer to their work as "land art." These works are located in outdoor natural environments rather than in art galleries where the art works are protected from the elements.

What is the Forest Art Project?
For the Forest Art Project, seven artists have created land-based works over a ten-day period in mid-August 2009. Visitors to Haliburton Forest are invited to hike the Wild Woods Walk just north of Base Camp during this period to meet the artists and observe their creative processes at work. The art works will remain in the forest as a permanent part of the Wild Wood Walk, and visitors are invited to experience them at any time, in any season.

Theme
The theme for the Forest Art Project is "Sustainability", a crucial element in the philosophy that guides Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve. This is the second year artists will be working on the Forest Art Project and, over time, will transform some of Haliburton Forest's landscape into a multi-layered, intensive Land Art experience. Many of the past year's installations are still in evidence.

The 2010 Forest Art Project artists are:

Mary Anne Barkhouse graduated from the Ontario College of Art. She is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, photography and jewelry, examining environmental concerns and aboriginal culture. Barkhouse belongs to the Nimpkish band, Kwagiutl First Nation.

Reinhard Reitzenstein, curator and co-organizer of this symposium, is an artist and educator whose work has consistently explored ways to interconnect nature, culture, science and technology. His large-scale tree-based works, which critically engage forestry practices, have been installed in Chile, Germany, Venezuela, Finland, Taiwan, and throughout North America. He is currently an associate professor at The University at Buffalo where he also directs the sculpture program.

Gayle Young is a composer whose outdoor sound installations bring attention to the sonic environment, or soundscape. In addition to her outdoor installation, created in collaboration with Reinhard Reitzenstein, she is writing an all-season guide to the soundscape of the Wild Woods Walk. She is working with one of last year's artists, Michel Depatie to create the music for a video based on the installation Fragilite.

Lorne Reitzenstein

George Afedzi Hughes was born in Ghana. He received his MFA at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA, and his undergraduate degree from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. He has exhibited his work throughout the USA and internationally with exhibitions in Germany, China, Portugal, Ghana, the Netherlands, England and Canada. His works can be seen as an aesthetic discourse on our apparent certainties and everyday matters. In combining commercial iconography, signage, symbols and text, Hughes is demonstrating the perishability of nature as well as of man and his moral values and qualities. He is represented by Skoto Gallery, NY, NY USA; Influx Contemporary Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal; Artco Kunstagentur, Herzogenrath, Germany; and Artists Alliance, Accra, Ghana.

Gareth Lichty studied Fine Arts at York University in Toronto and Sculpture at Leeds University in England. He has exhibited interna-tionally and nationally with exhibitions in Europe, New Zealand and Canada. Lichty has been a Director for CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener and Area) since 2005 and is currently President and Chair of the Board. He has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. He works with excessive amounts of hand made or manufactured units to create large scale organic sculptural installations that deal with the internal and external architecture of a space. Lichty lives and works in Kitchener, Ontario and is represented by Peak Gallery, Toronto, Canada.

Robert Wiens was born in Leamington, Ontario. He studied fine art at The New School of Art, Toronto. Since 1978, his work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada, as well as in Los Angeles, New York, London, Amsterdam and Bologna. He made his name in the eighties as a post modern sculptor of monumental fragments, and for more than a decade now he has also engaged in meticulous watercolours showing closely cropped trunks and limbs of tree species such as white and red pine from Ontario's old growth forests. He carves and fabricates works with equal attention to high detail and realism. His realism, however, is not a style by choice alone as much as moral and ethical stance: a provocation to see the fragments as part of a large whole in need of conservation. Robert Wiens lives and works in Picton, Ontario. He is represented by the Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, Canada.