EDM Studio Inc.

This temporary installation, completed by EDM Studio partner Andrew Edmundson in 2002, is a study of patterns inspired by the rural Ontario landscape. The design focuses on the boundary conditions where cultivated land meets forest and hedgerows.

This piece can be divided into two parts: the woven backdrop and the cloud-like foreground. Both parts speak simultaneously to human and regional scales. At the human scale, the background weave replicates the order laid down by tractors tilling farm fields into mounds and furrows. At the same time, the weave addresses patterning at a larger scale, found in the regimented property lines and roads that cross the surface while the earth rolls beneath.

The patterning studied in the foreground piece is much more subtle. The "foliage" element was derived by tracing a forest canopy and concentrating on the voids. These tracings reveal similarites at vastly different scales. The negative spaces traced from a large wood-lot spanning acres, are strikingly similar to the negative spaces found between clusters of leaves in a single tree. By concentrating on the edges of the negative spaces, a series of elements were isolated. These elements all have bays, lagoons, and peninsulas, that are simultaneously reminiscent of a forest's edge and an opening in a tree canopy. Joining and suspending these elements recreates an illusion of randomness, despite the repitition of only six pieces.