The Origin of the Stream Path

by Glen Gardner, undergraduate student, Landscape Architecture

Once again this spring the South Carolina Botanical Garden reaped the rewards of collaboration between Clemson's landscape architecture program, the Lee Hall Gallery, and the Botanical Garden. The reward is a new land art sculpture, entitled "The Stream Path." This latest art in the series of nature sculptures was designed and built by French artists Gilles Bruni and Marc Babarit, along with assistance from landscape architecture students, technical writing students, and many dedicated volunteers.

Located downstream from the gristmill and upstream from last year's sculpture by Alfio Bonanno, "The Stream Path" was designed entirely on a site-specific basis. Bruni and Babarit had no ideas or plans prior to their arrival at the Garden. In fact, they had never even been in South Carolina before and had only the 28 rainy days of February to locate the site, design the sculpture, and complete the entire installation. They toured the Garden until they found the perfect site for their work, where they could enhance the existing area by identifying with its natural characteristics.

The inspiring sculpture, constructed of local rocks, twigs, and small trees, adds a sense of space to the natural forested area. Bruni and Babarit, who describe themselves as "an association, a couple, unidentical twins, dissimilar brothers, a two-headed artist," each chose his own side of the stream to enhance. Thus, the result of their collaboration is a "light" side and a "shadow" side of the stream path. Some visitors even say that they can detect the shape of a "B" in a portion of the design, perhaps a hidden design reflection of the often used nickname for the two men, "B and B."

The artists' intent is that, after arriving at the sculpture, visitors will walk or wade down the steam bed in between the two steep embankments to gain a true appreciation and sense of being in the sculptural area. A visitor's perception of scale is greatly altered as he or she compares viewing the sculpture from up on the hill looking downward to actually becoming one with the work while travelling the streambed and looking up at it. While down in "The Stream Path," visitors can truly appreciate the feeling of being in a canyon and are dwarfed by the hovering sculpted banks of the stream.

If, in fact, "God is in the details," then God must have been on the site in the Garden to inspire the artists. Bruni and Babarit paid excruciating attention to detail while constructing the sculpture. Days were spent by the artists and volunteers finding appropriate patterns on rock faces, arranging the rocks according to thickness and color, and weaving small waddle fences out of twigs into the face of the embankment. When the time finally arrived for the artists' important photographic documentation of the project, Babarit poured water on the quartz stones to achieve a richer hue; they took breaks in between clouds to capture appropriate shades and shadows; and they even waited for branches on the surrounding trees to dry in order to have photographs of the site both while it was wet and while it was dry.

The end result of the project is not only the successful implementation of a new nature sculpture in the South Carolina Botanical Garden. The result includes the friendships, knowledge, and experiences gained by all those who collaborated: Bruni, Babarit, Ernie Denny (S. C. Botanical Garden), Frances Chamberlain (Department of Landscape Architecture), John Bednar (Department of Languages), Barbara Weaver (Department of English), and many students from landscape architecture and writing courses. The interwoven reactions and collaborations between the two artists, the artists and nature, the artists and the students, the English and landscape architecture departments, and perhaps most importantly, the visitors, the art, and mother nature offer a wonderful learning tool that enriches all who participate.

The reward is not just for the Garden, but for all those who worked on the project and all who visit the South Carolina Botanical Garden.