Changing the Landscape

1991

Site-specific public art installation, Harbourfront Artists’ Gardens, Toronto. Commissioned by Harbourfront Corporation.

Media: mid-sized automobile, hemlock spruce, Colorado blue spruce, Little Champion globe cedar, Little Giant globe cedar, ostrich fern, silver lace vine, English ivy, Boston ivy, goutweed, cutleaf stephanandra, purpleleaf sand cherry,  meadow-in-a-can

Dimensions: 102 sq. m

Named after the automobile sales slogan used in a short-lived television ad in which a bucolic landscape of rolling hills becomes ominously covered by cars, this installation reverses the original intent of commercial monopoly. In the introduced landscape of the outdoor installation, the automobile is consumed by nature. Reclamation occurs due to its abandonment; the organic growths eventually obliterate the original form of the foreign object.