Toronto Sculpture Garden

Across the street from the imposing Cathedral Church of St. James was this beautiful sculpture garden just calling our names...


Turns out this was the Toronto Sculpture Garden which has been here since 1981. Not as long as the Cathedral! Usually every city we go to has a sculpture garden of some sort so we knew we had to check it out.

Looking through the fence, you could see various "heads" on the benches...

(info from the official site's History link):

"The Toronto Sculpture Garden has been the site of innovative contemporary sculpture installations since 1981. This small, urban park in the downtown core serves as a testing ground for visual artists to experiment with public space and to address issues of architectural scale, materials and context. It has given some artists their first opportunity to work out-of-doors, to experiment with the challenges of siting work within an urban environment and it has provided them with critical experience for future public art projects. "

There was a big stone waterfall which is sometimes incorporated into guest artists' work.

(Info below taken from the offical website archive's on past exhibits. The following info is about a particular artist whose work was on exhibit during our visit in June 2010)

Ted Bieler
BESIDE MYSELF
May 17 – September 15, 2010


Artist Statement

BESIDE MYSELF extends an invitation to sit down on any of five wood benches next to larger than life-size three-dimensional images of the human head cast in aluminium.

"Each head occupies half a bench, inviting a relaxed conversation, a civilized reflection, an intimacy. Each head acts as though a different part of ourselves had been cut into and exposed. Our shifting multiple profile selves, our southern Ontario rolling landscape selves, our shimmering rectilinear selves -- each dissolving into the other in a conversation of cross-references and allusions, sculpture to sculpture and sculpture to participant."

We thought the heads were totally cool. I took a few cool shots of TC through the heads...I really liked the criss cross pattern on the one below:

(more from the artist's statement) - You think I'd write this stuff????

"Sculpture occupies the same space as our bodies, confronting and reflecting us physically, psychologically and gesturally. The fabrication of the patterns from which the heads are cast employs an action of successive division and re-assembly with gestures that generate both separation and symmetry: right eye/left eye, right ear/left ear, nose, chin, Adam’s apple. Here, in a dialogue on a bench, we are once again at the centre of a gesture of reunion in the act of mirroring and recognizing ourselves."

Haha, you can see TC in the background. She was still wearing her horse head hat and running around...

There she is again!

Cool profile shot of the sculpture...

It's easy to see why people would enjoy coming here. It's like a peaceful respite right in the middle of the city.

So pretty here...time to move on though!

Official website of the Toronto Sculpture Garden here!

Onward...