The Earth Art movement was born in the US in the late 1960's. Championed by such artists as Robert Smithson the movement could 'be understood as a protest against the perceived artificiality, plastic aesthetics and ruthless commercialization of art at the end of the 1960's". This has always been one of my favorite art movements because it took art out of the museum and into the natural world where it was meant to be part of the landscape and maybe more than any other art movement (yes, even Dadaism) I think it challenged us to look at art in new ways.
I doubt that this is what this person was thinking of when they made their entire yard into a bulbous contorted mass of bonsai-ism but I can't help but thinking of the words of Robert Smithson when he said "A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world."
The gardener that lives in this house (and many others on Beacon Hill) has created sort of a public folk art sculpture that reminds me of how lucky we are to live in this area of Seattle.
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