A somewhat secretive art display will be coming to Creston this summer.
The Invisible Garden will be done by Montreal artist Loren Williams and will depict two women gathering plants found in the valley in 1915.
However, there is one special trick to the display: it’s only visible when wet.
“She puts a secret coating on concrete in strategic places in town,” explains Creston mayor Arnold DeBoon.
“When it rains, you will see the outline of plants.”
The display will be going up near the newly renovated grain elevator sometime in August.
“The Invisible Garden is about two local women who collected plant specimens in the area of Kootenay Lake in 1915,” DeBoon says. “They were then recorded in the University of Bc herbarium collection. The plants will be representative of the plants that those ladies collected way back in 1915.”
DeBoon says when it rains, the plants will magically appear. However, there will still be ways to admire the art on sunny days.
“I believe there will also be spray bottles so people can go to the location, spray the cement, and magically, the Invisible Garden will appear.”
The display will be done in conjunction with the Kunze Gallery that operates out of the grain elevator and DeBoon says it will cost the town nothing.
“It only lasts for a certain amount of time because the chemical that she puts on the sidewalk weathers and fades away over time. So it’s a temporary art installation that I think people will find really interesting and cool just to see it appear when the cement is wet.”