The prompt “Cooperation and Sharing” immediately made me think of my visit to Loveland, Colorado last year. I was staying with my good friend, Mary McCauley, in Fort Collins, when Mary took me to the park on the way to visit her amazing Textile Art Group. We walked around a 10 acre purpose built sculpture park with approx 170 sculptures of all shapes and sizes in it.

The park began in 1984 when a group of five Loveland sculptors together with representatives of the City of Loveland, the Chamber of Commerce and a few interested citizens fostered the idea of a sculpture show in Benson Park. They envisioned the outdoor exhibition and sale as a unique environment for sculptors from across the country to showcase their work as well as a way to generate funding for a sculpture garden. The City of Loveland designated Benson Park as the site for the sculpture garden and in 1985, it became a reality with it s first exhibition. Proceeds from the annual show are used to fund additional sculptures, park improvements and landscaping.

My piece (shown above) is called “Working Together” and is a tribute to the cooperation of these groups to produce such an amazing park. I was inspired by various sculptures and took loads of photos. For this prompt I especially liked a couple that I viewed as chatting together, bound together and general chatter. The background I have hand dyed green then over indigo dyed which helps show the wetlands in the centre of the park.

This detail shows the background which I hand dyed then did a lot of over printing with various thermofaxes. The light grey areas were very stark when I put the piece together so I got some pewter paint and a thermofax and went over the top once the piece was made.

This next details shows a sculpture of 5 poles which I liked as I felt they were standing around chatting to each other. The sculpture itself is called “Cultural Pedestrians” by Sue Quinlan shown below. I did not want to add any of the detail so put another colour at the top of each pole to represent the heads. It was my favourite sculpture in the park.

The last two images below show, on the left, the detailed circle of one of the sculptures (unfortunately I forgot to get the name) and beside it my interpretation. I liked the interlinking parts of the sculpture but wanted to incorporate lettering instead to relate to the endless communication between the parties to produce this amazing sculpture garden. I also chose to put it at the intersection of the two lines to represent the collaboration that has happened and no doubt continues to do so, to make this a wonderful event.

Size 40 inches H x 19 inches W

hand dyes, indigo dye, thermofax, machine pieced and appliqued and machine quilted