Marijampole Art School tames the green space by creating sustainable sculptures from natural materials

This year marks the 95th anniversary of the creation of a French-style park next to the former Marijampole teachers’ seminary building. This dendrological park was created on the initiative of the director of the seminary, Feliksas Treigys, which was influenced by the fact that F. Treigys’s wife, Aleksandra Olina Treigiene, was French, and she brought many of the park’s plants from her homeland. In recent years, the park has been decaying, but the teachers and students of the art department of the Marijampole Art School, which is now operating here, took the initiative to revive the park so that it becomes an attractive place for the townspeople again. During the summer, during the students’ practice, the first plein-air exhibition of land art sculptures “L’e art de la terre” was organized, during which 12 land art objects were created in modern forms and ways of expression, which were realized by 5 art school teachers, more than 60 students, 3 sculptors from Lithuanian, 2 local sculptors, Marijampole VET students – florists. This experience and the support of the municipality encouraged to expand this project, to look for funds, organizers, developers – and thus create added value for the historical park. In plein air, materials are used from bushes, tree branches, leaves, using only ropes and stones.

In October-November of 2024, the project “Expanded Lithuania – Adopting the Next 2024” initiated together with the Goethe Institute in Lithuania was successfully implemented. Marijampole Art School recently became an art residence where sculptor Kestutis Lanauskas worked. An active sculptor, multiple laureate of international competitions, who actively creates in Lithuania and abroad together with the sculptor Remigijus Kupcikas, a teacher at Marijampole Art School, and the students of four basic education classes, of which there were about forty, created an ambitious figure “Pegasus” with a height of three meters and an area of ​​about 20 square meters.  The impressive-sized land art sculpture has been added to and finds its place in the park, which is home to more sculptures created during this summer’s land art plein air L’e art de la terre (Art of the Earth).

Thanks to this artist, art teachers and students understood the intricacies of the construction of natural art, while creating a sustainable sculpture, they realized how to connect materials, in this case branches, how to fasten them, fill the volume, discover different techniques, textures, thus creating art from simple pruned, unnecessary tree branches. According to the artist, the most important idea, and after analyzing the bends and lines formed by the natural relief, is to add them sensitively. The sustainability principles of earth art speak about the least possible human intervention in nature. The essence of land art is to highlight the beauty of nature, sensitively complementing it, filling it, creating spots, lines that complement the terrain.

In order to nurture the identity of the city of Marijampole through the unique, historical past of the park and building complex of the Marijampole Teachers’ Seminary, a meeting was held with the city’s anthropologist dr. Ekaterina Lavrinec. She shared insights on how creating new routes can open up city spaces, change relationships and provide other experiences, analyzed the city experience through the prism of tourism.

“Many schools throughout Lithuania have excellent green spaces with powerful trees and wonderful avenues. The Marijampole Art School has a fantastic historical park in the neighborhood (historically it was a single complex), where they organize earth art plein airs with the students. Thanks to the natural sculptures, a route was gradually formed, inviting you to travel through the park while inspecting its vegetation, paying attention to the relief”

According to the anthropologist, this historical park is lucky with its neighbors, because the School of Art shows a great example that parks near educational institutions can become creative laboratories. The development of a careful, nature-friendly route through the park to view the earth art sculptures created by students and teachers is the first step to involve the wider city community in learning about the park.