Stamford Downtown
HedgeFun
Sixteen topiary animals, solar-lit, spread across downtown Stamford for a summer.
ClientStamford Downtown
LocationDowntown Stamford, Connecticut
Pieces16 animals, 5 to 12 feet
MaterialsOutdoor boxwood over structural steel
On showJune – September 2022
The brief
Stamford Downtown wanted a set of animals to stand on open sidewalks and in parks from June to September 2022, the twenty-ninth year of its summer public art program. We built all sixteen to one theme and one engineering standard, and delivered them together.
Every animal had to stand on pavement in all weather, day and night, with people leaning on it and posing with it. Each one also had to light itself, because a sidewalk has nowhere to plug in.
You can buy single animals from the same family in dinosaur topiary and bear topiary.
Sixteen pieces that had to survive a summer in public.
The sculptures are structural, weight-bearing steel frames interwoven with outdoor boxwood foliage. We use that construction for any piece that has to stand outdoors unattended, and here it was sized for a crowd instead of a garden.
Each animal carried its own solar lighting, so the exhibit stayed lit after dark without a single power feed.
Solar lighting and anchored footings let a piece live on an open sidewalk. Our lighted animals are built to the same specification.
Every animal carried its own solar lighting.
The menagerie
Sixteen animals, one standard.
Built as a set, so every piece reads as part of the same family from across a street.
Dolly Llama
The program gave every animal a pun for a name, and people went looking for them by name.
Holy Cow
Five feet tall in outdoor boxwood, at the small end of the range. A public set needs more than one scale, or the trail gets repetitive.
The sauropod
At the other end: a long-necked dinosaur built to be seen down a street rather than across a lawn.
A public topiary program is not decoration. It is a reason to walk the whole downtown.
In the press
What the town made of it.
The exhibit ran as the twenty-ninth year of Stamford Downtown’s Art in Public Places program. It closed with an online auction, and the proceeds helped pay for trees planted in downtown Stamford. VHB sponsored Ellie Font, the twelve-foot elephant, which stood at North State and Federal beside the Transportation Center.
- Stamford Patch Stamford Downtown’s HedgeFun topiaries up for auction ↗
- VHB Transforming the Stamford Transportation Center through planning and public art ↗
- Ferguson Library Art in Public Places: HedgeFun in Stamford Downtown, Summer 2022 ↗
A collaboration with PondCreek Studios.
Specification
What it is made of.
- Frames
- Structural, weight-bearing steel
- Foliage
- Outdoor boxwood, UV-rated and fire-resistant
- Lighting
- Solar: every animal lit itself, with no street power
- Range
- 5 to 12 feet tall
- Count
- 16 animals
- Duration
- Installed outdoors, unattended, June to September
- Program
- Art in Public Places, 29th year
- Afterlife
- Auctioned at the close; proceeds part-funded trees planted downtown
Ready-made and custom
Where does a piece like this come from?
You can buy pieces ready-made, or commission one to your drawing, in the same frames, foliage and finishes.
Planning something like this?
Tell us what you are picturing.
Send a photo or a sketch with your dimensions and date. We come back with a design, a price and a delivery date, then build it to order.
- 4–10 weekstypical build time
- Any scaletabletop to 40 feet
- US & Canadashipping and install
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