IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS

In the Berkshires, installing art, bearing the consequences

- TED LOOS

When British sculptor Laura Ellen Bacon was in the woods, making a newly commissioned work on the grounds of the Clark Art Institute in the Berkshires, she was expecting a hefty dose of nature. But maybe not quite what she got, something out of Wild Kingdom.

For an abstract piece, Gathering My Thoughts, Bacon wove thin strands of willow together, building up to a monumental shape — a mysterious, wavy growth in the forest that evokes the primitive instinct to use plants and branches to build enclosures. And if it looks like an enormous animal nest, that's par for the Clark show “Ground/work 2025”, where six outdoor commissions will remain on view for more than a year (until October 2026).

The works are drawing visitors, and then some: spiders, caterpillars, deer and squirrels. “I saw bears on a few different occasions,” said Bacon, who is based in Derbyshire, England.

One time, a bear came within about 10m of her.

“I was down on my knees weaving away, absorbed in what I was doing, and it was just watching me,” she said. “I kept my distance by moving up the path a little bit. Then it went all around the work. It climbed on there and gave it a really good sniff.”

The meeting encapsulates the unpredictability and surprise of outdoor sculpture — both for makers and viewers — that the show’s curator, Glenn Adamson, wanted to harness for the show, which also features works by an international cast: Javier Senosiain, Yo Akiyama, Hugh Hayden, Milena Naef and Aboubakar Fofana.

“I love the idea of a surreal moment of encounter,” said Adamson, an independent art historian and curator who was formerly the director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. “Everything has an eerie magical feeling. Each work is on its own, it has no other art context in the line of sight, as if it had teleported there into the forest.”