HAND and PARK TREE – Installation

Hand mit Parkbaum – Installation, Volksgarten Glarus Schweiz

The Caring Hand at Volksgarten Glarus in September 2020

I developed the idea for the installation of a hand with a park tree in 1990 in my studio in Alsace as an art-in-architecture project for an at the time newly built agricultural school in central Switzerland. On closer inspection, however, there was a lack of space and money, so I put the idea aside. I didn’t make the model until 2004, when it was agreed that we would produce a sculpture for Skulptura 04.

In spring 2004, a total of six people worked on the negative molds of the “Hand” on a scale of 20:1 in various stages of production. I and my colleague Eva Oertli were responsible for the realization and financing. The organizer of the “Skulptura 04” exhibition, under the direction of Werner Dobler, transported the five concrete cast elements from Haslen to Glarus.

The HAND was very well received by the public. Voices were quickly raised demanding that the community of Glarus should buy this work, but the government of the municipality of Glarus took the position that we would donate the installation to the town of Glarus, or give it to them for little money. Within a short time, the purchase for the town was spontaneously supported by private donations. Donations, letters to the editor and articles in the local press confirmed this will in the public and three months after the opening of the exhibition it was clear, that private donors would donate the capital to purchase the installation for the town of Glarus.

Barely a year after it appeared, CHF 43,700 of private funds were donated and so the town of Glarus received the hand as a veritable gift from the public.

The installation was planned for the 4 months duration of the Skulptura 04 exhibition. The substructure of the concrete elements made of steel, which Jürg Ferndriger made free of charge according to my sketches, had to last not less than for 19 years, although Glarus was given the condition in the sales document that the substructure had to be replaced by a stainless steel construction by 2006. In 2023, my colleague Eva Oertli and I reminded the Glarus municipal authorities that the old substructure had to be replaced immediately. In the course of this work, the concrete fingers were restored and a negative mold was made of epoxy resin to produce a copy of the five concrete fingers.

STREET ART , the term refers to artistically motivated interventions in public space.

The Caring Hand, the park tree – a gesture of taking responsibility for our own collective actions

Article in “Street Art Utopia” (Link)

„The Caring Hand“ 2024 in Montgomery, Alabama USA

The Caring Hand - Beat Huber
The Caring Hand with park tree in the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park at the Alabama River in march 2024 in Montgomery. Foto ©2024 by Equal Justice Initiative

On March 27, 2024, the “Freedom Monument Sculpture Park” in Montgomery, Alabama USA was officially opened by human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative EJI, in the presence of the media. The park is a 17 acre area on the Alabama River that commemorates the emancipation of the freed African-American population in 1865. Pictures of the copy in Montgomery of the Hand in Glarus, which we made in Switzerland in 2023, were distributed in the mainstream media in the United States, such as NBC, in spring 2024.

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