Kinetic Sculpture at the Berkshire Botanical Garden

Though trained as an architect and founder of the award-winning firm Prentice and Chan in 1965, Tim Prentice insists that the effect his second passion, kinetic sculpture, has on viewers is largely out of his control. “The wind is more imaginative than I am,” enthuses the West Cornwall, Connecticut, artist, who recently installed a half-dozen large-scale works on the grounds of the Berkshire Botanical Garden (BBG) in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. “It’s moody, whimsical, works twenty-four hours a day, and doesn’t sleep.”

Gone With the Wind: The Kinetic Art of Tim Prentice, which dots the historic property’s fifteen acres through Columbus Day, showcases the ever-changing power of nature. “Working outside is a lot more dangerous than working inside,” says Prentice, who creates mostly commissioned works for sprawling indoor spaces such as airports from here to Hong Kong.

The BBG, however, is a unique site. “There are no big, open fields where you get the wind ganging up on them,” Prentice explains of the rolling landscape buffered by three thousand species of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Still, “It’s like putting a boat out for the year. [A piece must] be able to deal with the worst weather, but be alive and light for average [conditions].”

Wanderers will be delighted—and perhaps surprised: there’s Charlotte (above right), a giant spider crafted of silver mesh hardware cloth, whose tubular limbs boogie in the breeze; spiraling, geometric patterns of Queen Anne’s Wheel; and the wiggling, rotating White Zinger, constructed from three pieces of sixteen-foot-long PVC piping, set beneath a series of towering pine trees. Fred, a giant, scowling crustacean, is locked safely in a cage.

 “I make these toys and hopefully the wind gets intrigued and plays with them,” Prentice says. “They come alive—but only when the wind wants them to.” (JUNE 2009)

THE GOODS
Gone With the Wind: The Kinetic Art of Tim Prentice
Through October 12
Berkshire Botanical Garden
Routes 102 & 183
Stockbridge, Mass.
413.298.3926
www.berkshirebotanical.org
www.timprentice.com