Landscape
Samherji Sculpture Garden, Dalvík, Iceland. 2022
Samherji Sculpture Garden, Dalvík, Iceland. 2022
The outdoor artwork fills three plots near the fish processing plant and is composed of three mountains, seven stones, a rock and six lyme-grass shapes which together form a single entity named Landscape.
Environmental art is ruled by the same principles as installations where an artwork is created for a specific space. For outdoor artwork, the artist needs first of all to define the space to be used. For this particular artwork, consideration was made of the size and proportions of the building, the shape of the plots and the window wall which reflects the environment. The glass wall is like a gigantic landscape painting – behind it is the staff canteen and when visibility is limited, or it is dark outside, there is always a view of the mountains with their illuminated blue diamond peaks and from afar one can see floating mountain rings.
In her career, it can be said that Brynhildur has created her own “mineral kingdom”. She has worked a great deal on casting hot glass into sand, which is a process similar to the flow of molten lava. The whaleback rock formation is a geological phenomenon recurrent in Brynhildur’s work. Whaleback rocks are formed when sub-glacial ice streams meet bedrock and streamline it into shapes reminiscent of the backs of whales.
It is a whaleback that connects the landscape and seascape of Dalvík. Whaleback is the name of the light-colored sculpture which breaks out of the wave of stone and heads southeast towards the ocean. This is the backbone of the artwork and the whaleback brings forth the shape of the lyme-grass formations.
At the entrance to the building, there is a separate bed made up of more delicate pebbles which form a kind of a decorative arrangement in the garden of stones. This is a good place to pause and reflect. For her outdoor art, Brynhildur has often sought inspiration from traditional Japanese gardens with their emphasis on creating equilibrium and tranquillity and where the layout is based on the form of the triangle/pyramid. Vertical lines symbolise the sky, slanting lines represent man and horizontal lines the earth.
This is a man-made landscape built from concrete, resin, lyme-grass, sand, and rocks. Each mountain is made up of eight concrete units, but the peaks are made of plastic (crystal clear resin). The whaleback is composed of two forms: the base is white cement, black sand and white granite but in the top part fragments of crushed glass replace the stones. The surface is sanded and polished. The stones are made of concrete and differ in terms of texture (as do the mountains). The inside of the molds is painted with a material called retarder, which has the effect of slowing down the hardening of the cement. When a finished piece is removed from the mold it is washed down with a high-pressure hose to reveal the filler material (different stones). The stones in the meditation area are molded in sand by the same technique as used for the sand casting of glass. Inlaid shapes are made of crystal clear resin.
Lyme-grass is the only plant species growing in the sculpture garden. Lyme-grass has a long and interesting history in Iceland. In earlier times it was used for human consumption but more recently it has played an important part in soil reclamation. In collaboration with the Dalvík Concrete Plant, some sand dunes were built, and tufts of lyme-grass collected from the shore ridge a few hundred meres away. The dunes were covered with compressed sand and planted with lyme-grass seeds provided by the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland.
Landscape was erected in July 2022. It is a living work of art which is yet to grow and flourish. The lyme-grass must be carefully tended to help the seedlings take root in the man-made sand dunes.