DATE: 1/16/07

CONTACT: Ernie Denny; 864-650-8841; edenny@clemson.edu

WRITER: Diane Palmer, 864-656-4741; spalmer@clemson.edu

Cultural exchange sculpture project to be built at Botanical Garden

CLEMSON -- Aspiring sculpture artist Yvette Dede of Charleston will be coming to the S.C. Botanical Garden in February along with established artist Niroko Inoue of Nara, Japan to work on creative and cultural exchange sculpture projects.

Dede was born of Dutch-Indonesian parents a few months after they immigrated to the United States.

Inoue was born and raised in Japan and continues to live there. She currently serves as a special advisor for cultural exchange for the government of Japan.

“The idea is to bring together an aspiring artist and an established artist to evoke creative exchange by working separately, but together,” said Ernie Denny, program facilitator for the Garden

Denny said the ultimate intent of this creative-cultural exchange sculpture project is to create interaction between two females of Asian decent where one has been acculturated since birth in an Eurasian family that immigrated to a foreign country and culture and the other has been acculturated since birth in an Asian family, culture and country.

The artists will be assigned a site and then will select natural materials to create the sculpture. Some artists choose to work only with materials collected from or near the site. Others prefer to work with material that is indigenous to the region, and some blend the two.

There are 10 sculptures that still exist, scattered throughout the garden. The project is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information about the sculpture program, visit the garden’s website at: http://www.clemson.edu/scbg/.

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