Life Cycle Installation, 2005, Center for Innovation, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND
The sculpture garden grew out of a desire to create a place where art is integrated with the four-season life cycles of prairie grasses, forbs and wildflowers. The garden is a place where people can engage in discussions while strolling or sitting quietly in contemplation. It offers space to experience the tension between imaginary dimensions and the constraints of space; it encourages study, solitude, and friendly encounters. The garden, like a book is perishable. And paradoxically man relies on the perishable to convey his desire for continuity and re-growth through the regeneration of the landscape. This is a place for people to develop ideas and allow dreams to soar while offering a dialog between art and nature.
Prairie Garden, 2000, installed on the Court House lawn, Cooperstown, North Dakota
Prairie Garden, 2000, commissioned by the GK Gallery in Cooperstown, North Dakota for a site on the lawn of the Court House ( a historical building) A collaboration between Kathryn Lipke,born and raised in Cooperstown, North Dakota; Ines Diedrich, Germany and Leena Ikonan, Finland both sculptors invited as representative of the Scandinavian and German immigrants to North Dakota.The garden was destroyed in 2012 to make way for a new court house building.
Materials: prairie rocks and boulders, prairie wild flowers with a seating element and sculpture of a seed sprout carved by the artists of a local river oak.