Joshua Wiener

In Residence: March 23 – May 15, 2009 Exhibition opens May 14; continues through June 5, 2009 Learning Labs: La Academia at Denver Inner City Parish Elevating Nature: The Germination of IdeasJoshua Wiener grew up in a stone sculpting family and has been involved with art his entire life. During his residency, he will continue to work on his living art series that inverts the typical garden to a sculpture relationship.  This living art series is about looking at the environment and finding ways to be caretakers. Using salvaged materials, he is driven to improve biodiversity in urban space and to create sculptures designed to have a living skin. With traditional stone carving techniques, he constructs living sculptures with internal irrigation to allow the cultivation of plant materials. The work becomes a combination of construction and subtractive sculpting, with man-made and natural materials. PlatteForum’s gallery and courtyard will fuse studio and greenhouse. Josh hopes to create a permanent living art sculpture/canopy at the entrance to PlatteForum’s courtyard. The sculpture will be the focal point of PlatteForum’s courtyard transformation into an urban garden that is taking place during the year.Joshua received numerous public and private commissions around the country, and his work is in collections around the world. He has apprenticed twice with master sculptor Kazutaka Uchida in Tokyo, Japan, and was invited to Bangalore, India in 2004 to participate in a two-week stone-sculpting symposium. In 1999, he co-founded Art in Your Park to provide free opportunities for the general public to make art in public spaces. Through this program he has worked with hundreds of children.Photos by Efrain Cruz