Bergen Rocks Visitor Info

Dates: July 1-31 2010
Open to the Public: 1pm-5pm daily (Closed every Tuesday)
Opening ceremony: 3pm Saturday, July 3
Closing ceremony: 3pm Saturday, July 31
Tours of Sculpture park, work site and gallery/meet the artists: 7pm every Wednesday

How to get there:
From Sundre-Turn south at A&W 6.4 KM, Turn west (Pioneer Lodge Road/Twnshp Rd 32.3) 1.6 KM, Turn south (Rng Rd 5.4) .5 KM
From Calgary- Travel north of Cochrane on Hwy 22 approx 40 min, Turn west on Bergen Road (Twnshp RD 32.0) to Bergen Store, Turn north 3.2KM, Turn west (Pioneer Lodge Road/Twnshp Rd 32.2) 1.6KM, Turn south (Rng Rd 5.4) .5KM

Admission: $2 pp

On Site:
-Bergen Sculpture Park, 10 monumental stone sculptures created at Bergen
Rocks 2008 and 09.
-Art Gallery featuring works by local and international artists
-Watch sculptors at work as they create monumental sculptures from more than
100,000 LB of sandstone and marble.

Participants:
Tanja Roder - Germany
Peerapong Doungkaew - Thailand
Saeid Ahmadi Iran
Carlos Rafael Valezquez Cuba
Mohamad Yazdi Iran
Dominico Di Guglielmo Canada

June 25, the work area and the gallery are looking pretty good. Have to prep the house and still need to get six more stones, only one on location now. It is quite large and needs to be so Christopher and I took a few hours at over a few days to cleave it to the thickness he needs. A bit of fun to break up the day of moving stone, planting trees, building tools...

This stone is for Saeid, it is ready for the crane to lift the top piece off which will be the one he uses. The other will make a cool table or vertical panel. The top piece, that wieghs about 24,000 lbs, was lifted with chisels and big steel wedges.

This year we have an exhibit that we are really excited about. the Bergen Ladies Aide group makes beautiful hand stiched quilts. On Tuesday members came over to install the exhibit of four wonderful examples of this wonderful artform. They are exhibited in the loft of the barn, with spotlights on each of them it is a great way to make use of that space.

Wednesday the stones arrived, it tooka good part of the afternoon to unload them. While we were doing that Peerapong arrived and started to measure and check his stone carefully even before it was unloaded.

Sculpting began on Thursday, opening ceremonies were held Saturday afternoon with the three scuptors who are here now and a nice little crowd of arts enthusiasts. Despite having participated in at least three international arts events in Canada, freely sharing his artistic inspirations and techniques with local artists and creating public artworks that have helped to make the events successful Carlos was refused a visa to enter Canada by our consulate in Cuba. Mohamad and Saeid will both be late due to delays in having their Visas issued. In European and Asian countries artists are typically given similar considerations to atheletes when applying to participate in international events, maybe that convention will be adopted in Canada when our government recognizes the significance of the contribution these artists make to our society.