Zbigniew Redyk, Ogród rzeźb / Sculpture garden

images by Jedrzej Labarzewski and Eliza Labarzewska

As can be seen in the image above, a house in Kierwik, Poland, features a number of sculptures, two of which are so large that they tower over the side wall of the house.

Life and works

These sculptures were created by Zbigniew Redyk, who worked his entire life in construction, primarily in the Polish capital. He is now retired and will be be around seventy at the time this article is published.

Once retired he settled in Kierwik. a village in northeastern Poland known for its picturesque landscapes and proximity to natural attractions.

There he began creating sculptures from concrete.

one of the other sculptures

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The image at the top of this article, made in 2022, shows an arrangement of some of these creations.

The red-hued sculpture on the right side of the house, over 3 meters tall and weighing approximately 300 kilos, is referred to as the the Sun Follower. Next to him stands a smaller, black sculpture depicting Anubis, a god in Egyptian mythology who was depicted as a jackal

Then there is a small white structure with two flags with the colours of Poland and the scene ends with a sculpturen of a warrior. At the entrance to the garden stand two large wolves.

The images in this post were made in early 2022 and by now Zbigniew Redyk may have made more creations.

Documentation

* Article on the website Znalezienie, edited by Radek Labarzewski

Video

* Video (made around 2021) by TVP3 Olsztyn on Facebook, with scenes of the decorations in the interior of the house

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Zbigniew Redyk

Sculpture garden

Kierwik, municipality of Świętajno, region Ermland-Mazurië, Poland

Marc Nucera, Jardin de sculptures / Sculpture garden

all pictures courtesy of Sophie Lepetit,
see documentation

In Noves, a commune with around 6,000 inhabitants (2022) in the southern French department of Bouches-du-Rhône, there is a garden with a collection of wooden sculptures, as shown in the images in this post.

Life and works

This art environment has been created by Marc Nucera, who was born in 1966 in Châteaurenard, some 5 km west of Noves. 

His father was a furniture maker. and so young Marc got to know different types of wood at an early age.

When he started working as a farm laborer after school, he collected large round disks of wood from tree trunks, which he managed to saw out himself and kept at home, without really knowing why.

Trees continued to fascinate him, and in 1990, at age 24, he began a project in which he manipulated trees, specifically the height of their branches, to ensure that their further growth would be as harmonious as possible. 

Marc Nucera did this with due consideration for the surroundings of the trees and their continued natural development.

This was an approach that particularly appealed to owners of large gardens, and after an initial assignment his way of working spread. 

He became kind of a landscape architect.and got more assignments for this type of maintenance work, which was probably also a pleasant source of income for him.

A next step in his approach to trees occurred when he began to focus on what could be done in terms of working with tree trunks.

Initially, Nucera used the wood from these trunks to make wooden chairs and tables, an activity he was able to pursue because he had moved into a house in Noves, where he could easily set up a studio.

From this rather simple woodworking method, he soon moved on to creating wooden sculptures, primarily of human figures, as the surrounding images show.

By then, he had gained so much experience in working with the chainsaw that he could undertake this more complex approach with a high degree of artistry.

Marc Nucera used trunks of different types of trees, such as olive, oak, almond, lime, cypress, but also cedar, which can have a surprising scent.

Working with chainsaws in the manner Mark Nucera did, takes strength and perseverance, and he displayed this, coupled with a loving approach to who or what he was portraying.

Working with tree fragments in his studio or in the garden near his home was also of great significance to Nucera. 

As he explains on his website, this allowed him to free himself from the forces inherent in the trees' locations. Working in or near his studio, he experienced the freedom to choose a design that wasn't tied to a specific location.

What you can do with a chainsaw turned out to be a large range of possibilities.

As the images in this post show, the variety of characters that Marc Nucera manages to extract from the cylindrical trunk of a tree is great.

Doucmentation

*  Website of Marc Nucera

*  Article (Septemberv 2016) on the website of Sophie Lepetit, with a serie op photos and a biography

*  Article (October 2016) on Facebook with a series of mages by Sophie Lepetit

*  Article on the website Retour de Voyage

*  Article (2020) on the weblog of Fabien Ribéry

A French book about Marc Nucera

"Les sculptures de Marc Nucera", text by Elisabeth Couturier and Françoise Bertaux, foreword by Chantal Colleu-Dumond, published by Actes Sud, 2020, 160 pages

Video

* Video (Vimeo, 26"08') by Emmanuelle Satti

* Another video (2024) by Villa Datris, publshed on Facebook, with comments by Marc Nucera, subtitled in Enlish, 

Marc Nucera

Garden with sculptures

Noves, dept Bouches-du-Rhône, region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. France

can be visited on appointmen

Władysław Szymczyk, Wnętrze ozdobione drewnianymi kreacjami / Interior decorated with wooden creations

this image and the next three are screenshots
from the movie in the documentation

The image above shows the front of a nursing home in Miszewo Murowany, a community in Poland, not far from the city of Plock. It also shows a person approaching the building with some kind of cargo.

The cargo in the cart includes several pieces of wood and the person pulling the cart is Władysław Szymczyk.

Life and works

Szymczyk was born in 1943 to a farming family in Tasto, Poland.

From a young age, he had to live with the disability of being deaf, which also meant that he didn't learn to read or write and that he couldn't express himself properly. 

This led to his admission in 1964 to a nursing home in Miszewo Murowany, near Płock, when he was in his early twenties.

 

For many years Władysław Szymczyk worked on a farm managed by the nursing home.  

However, in 1996, in his early fifties, he began working with wood, an activity he was likely able to undertake when the nursing home for the benefit of the residents had set up a working space with the necessary equipment.

The surrounding images give an impression of how Szymczyk worked with wood.

Before he starts working on a piece of wood, he makes a drawing, as shown in the image above, which gives a general idea of ​​what the creation should look like.

His wooden creations are usually left unpainted and they are lightly sanded to give the wood even more expressiveness. 

The the constituent parts of the creations are very realistic. 

For example, when Szymczyk makes a vehicle, its wheels can always turn; and if he makes a bus, the wooden equivalent will be equipped with doors that can open and close, and also with a double row of seats, visible by lifting the roof.

this image and the next three from the website Znalezienie

Active as a woodworker since the 1990s, Władysław Szymczyk must have amassed a substantial collection of small-scale wooden creations.

If this collection has a place in the nursing home, it can be considered as an art environment in the category of interior decorated with woodcarvings.

And if that's not the case, then Władysław Szymczyk still deserves an article in this blog, because he is one of the three main characters in the film series The Others. Art Is Where No One Looks

The films were shot in the summer of 2021 and their presentation took place on December 10, 2021 in a cinema in Płock. 

In addition to Wladuslaw Szymczyk, the triumvirate includes Wlodzimierz Roston and Wacław Rędziński, who have already been described in previous posts.

Documentation

* Article  by Radek Labarzewski on his website Znalezienie

Video

* Video (realized in 2021, YouTube, 6'57") on the channel of Znalezienie (subtitled in French) 

Władysław Szymczyk
Interior decorated with wooden creations 

Nursing home in Miszewo Murowany, near Plock,  dept Mazowieckie,  Poland 

José María Pérez Ruiz, La Casa Barco España / The house "Barco España"

this image and the next six courtesy of Jo Farb Hernandez
see Docementation 

Almuñécar is a Spanish city with some 27.000 inhabitants (2024), located along the Mediterranean sea, in the southwestern part of the coast of Granadina in the province of Granada.

This city was the hometown of José María Pérez Ruiz (1937-2025), also affectionately known as Pepe Pérez.

If you're wondering what the image of a ship has to do with where he lived.. .that ship was his home !

Life and works

Pepe Pérez' was conceived in 1937 when his father, who had a job as a barber, was on a short leave from military service during the Spanish Civil War.

At age twenty-two he joined the Merchant Marines, a choice that would have a major influence on the rest of his life.

In 1967, thirty years old, he married María del Carmen, who worked as a teacher, The couple would have two daughters and a son.

From his early years, Pérez was professionally connected with the shipping industry, a connection so strong indeed that it could be said that his heart lay in life at sea. 

His favorite saying was, “My ship is my treasure, my god is freedom, my law is strength and the wind, my only homeland is the sea.”

Pérez's dream was to build a house in Almuñécar that would always remind him of his connection to the sea..

He succeeded in realizing that dream, because in early 1970, with the help of a cousin, he began building a house. It was a unique construction in the shape of a 75-meter-long ship, full of nautical details, located along a road to the nearby popular beach of San Cristóbal.

The building is filled with maritime items, which Pérez bought here and there in ports, for example, when he heard that a ship was being scrapped. He acquired portholes, masts, ropes...... in short, all sorts of ship parts and instruments.

The interior of the ship that Pérez Ruiz constructed includes what you'd expect in a typical house: rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and so on.

It's not visible from the street, but behind the building there is a terrace with a swimming pool and a vegetable garden.

José Maria Pérez Ruiz passed away on January 9, 2025.

Documentation

* This art enviroment is introduced and analyzed in the book: Jo Farb Hernandez, Singular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2023 

* Article (January 2025) in Spanish newspaper Ideal

* Article (January 2025) in Spanish newspaper ABC de Granada

Video

* Video (2009, YouTube, 4'10#') by Canalsur, an interview with Pérez Ruiz

 

José María Pérez Ruiz

La Casa-Barco España 

Avenida del Mediterrano  34 

Almuñécar,  province of Granada, Spain

can be seen from the street

Google Streetview

Włodzimierz Rosłon, Udekorowane wnętrze i zewnętrze / Decorated interior and exterior

all images are screenshots from the video in the documentation

The image above shows a shelter located near the Brwilno Nature Reserve in Płock, a city in central Poland.

This shelter, established in 1963, has been funded by church funds. It has a capacity of 140 residents and it primarily housed adults with intellectual disabilities and people unable to work, who came from all regions of Poland.

In 1998, the facility was publicly funded, the province became the owner and the shelter was renamed as the Social House. It appears to exude a welcoming, positive atmosphere, with many activities focused on the well-being of its residents.

In conjunction with such a heart-whole approach the Social House also has a sculpture workshop, where pieces of pine and lime wood are waiting to be transformed into creative works.

Life and works

Wlodzimierz Roston is a resident of the shelter who frequently uses the workshop.. 

Born in Warsaw in 1953, he has lived in the social house since 1975.

In the image above, one likely can see him working in his own room, which is adorned with all sorts of art objects.

Roston began his artistic activities in the 1980s, working with great intensity. Most of his creations incorporate a variety of colors, from dark tones to vibrant colors, as can be seen in the images.

He not only created paintings to decorate the interior of his room at the shelter, but he also made a lot of wooden sculptures, some of which are incorporated into the chapel of the Social House and many others were added to its exterior fencing.

These wooden sculptures are finished in a variety of different colors, in the personal, artistic style that Roslan gradually developed and for which he became known, even outside Poland.

Several of the wooden creations are made on round poles, which were available in the workshop of the House or which Roston collected himself in its green surroundings. 

Some of these decorated poles were used to decorate the fence outside the Social House.

Individual pieces from his artistic output are included in various public and private collections in Poland, France, and the Czech Republic.

Włodzimierz Rosłon is one of three outsider artists who was launched in a project in 2021 aimed at raising awareness of the phenomenon of outsider art in Poland, a project with public events organized by Andrzej Kwasiborski and Radosław Łabarzewski.

Another artist in this project is Wacław Rędziński, whose work has previously been featured in an article on this blog..

Documentation

* Article (November 2021) by Radek Labarzewski on his website Znalezienie 

* Article (October 2024) on Plock Weekly by Alina Szatkowska about the shelter, with a passage about Wlodzimierz Roston

Video

* Video ( YouTube , 6'49") subtitled in English, produced in 2021 and published on website Znalezienie

Włodzimierz Rosłon

Decorated interior and exterior

Brwilno, Plock Municipality, dept Mazowieckie,  Poland

Zdzisław Syczewski, Ogród bajkowy / Fairytale garden

images are screenprints from the video in the documentation

The garden with all kinds of decorative elements, as shown above, is located in Hodyszewo, a village with about 140 inhabitants (2011) in the south of Poland, which is part of the municipality of Nowe Piekuty.

Life and works

This art environmend is a creation of Zdzislaw Syczewsk, who started the project in 2011.

He initially worked as a smelter, then as a steelworker, and after a few years, he started working at a factory that manufactured heating systems.

Meanwhile Syczewsk has retired.

Currently he has created a large variety of works, primarily fairytale figures, as can be seen in the surrounding images.

Syczewski doesn't consider himself an artist.

As he has said, he has been decorating the garden to pass the time. Although he also started working for the enjoyment of his grandchildren, that's no longer a motive now that they're grown up.

To make the creations, Syczewski uses willow wood as a material, which is easy to work with and readily available in the area.

Some of the fairytale characters he created are well-known, such as Pinocchio and the Smurfs, while others are primarily known in Eastern Europe, such as Masha and the Bear, the Wolf and the Hare, Matołek the Goat and Gargamel.

Documentation

* Article (November 2021) by Radek Łabarzewscy on his website Znalezienie

Video

* Video  (0'54", YouTube, November 2021) by Znalezienie

 

Zdzislaw Syczewski

Fairytale garden

Hodyszewo, municipality of Nowe Piekuty, dept of Podlaskie, Poland

can be visited

Anonymous, Art environment on Rousay Island

all pictures (2024) courtesy of Sophie Lepetit

The island of Rousay, part of the Orkney Islands, lies in the North Sea /Atlantic Ocean northeast of Scotland, approximately 53 kilometers away. from the mainland. 

tt covers an area of ​​46 square kilometers and has approximately 230 inhabitants.

Amidst the island's natural beauty, there are more than one hundred ancient archaeological sites. 

And then there's also a site, depicted in the surrounding images, that can be considered an art environment.

Thia art environment is located along the southern coast of Rousay, near a house called Giord.

It's quite possible that it was created by the owner of this house.

However, the house is currently for sale, and the advertisement for it doesn't mention the owner's name.

It does mention that Giord House has an outdoor space with a 1.37-hectare plot and a sheltered garden and this indicates that there was sufficient outdoor space to create an art environment.

The images in this post show that the creations in the art environment often include depictions of all kinds of animals.

But there are also other items on display, such as above left a figure made of iron bandages and above right a large anchor and a small-scale lighthouse.

The image below shows a ship on dry land, and it's questionable whether this ship is part of the art environment. 

In any case, the image gives an impression of the beautiful view one can have from the coast of Rousay Island.

Documentation

* Article and a variety of photos by Sophie Lepetit on her weblog

Anonymous 

Art environment on Rousay Island

Located along the southern coast of the island

Island of Rousay, part of the Orkney archipelago, Scotland, United Kingdom