"Symbiosis of Man and Nature" – Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal, Botanical Garden, Montréal, Québec

Hamamatsu is a city of 800,000 inhabitants located in western Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Its contribution to the Mosaïcultures Internationales competition is depicts a large turtle preparing to leap from a gigantic piano (complete with waterfall). Its rather unwieldy title is "Looking Toward the Future Through a Symbiosis of Man and Nature."

The official description was equally ponderous: "The relief magnified by the wind on the Nakatajima dune, one of Japan’s three largest dunes, is presented as an expression of land art. The loggerhead (caretta) turtle, an endangered species, lays its eggs in the dune and thus benefits from the city’s nature conservation activities, while the water represents the sounds produced by the piano to create the impression of flight to a future land filled with hope."

For all of it, though, it was a remarkably impressive sculpture.

For a description of the art of Mosaiculture and of the Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal competition, please turn to the first photo in this series at:

www.ipernity.com/doc/jonathan.cohen/33872015