DREAMWOODS: WHERE ART MEETS MEDITATION AND NATURE
Visit the beautiful “Dreamwoods,” hidden in the heart of Tuscany. This forest-gallery provides a unique experience for lovers of nature and of art, as well as for people who know, or would like to know, their inner reality too.
Around a hundred stone sculptures – some majestic or mysterious, some touching, and others playful – have been placed along the myriad, labyrinthine pathways that weave their way across the gentle mountain surface.
The artist, Deva Manfredo, has attempted to create a world of harmony, in which all life forms are respected. He appreciates the innate perfection of the stones (most of them collected from various parts of Italy). As he sees it, his creativity lies in simply drawing attention to their beauty, their individuality, and their primeval energy by placing them alone, in combinations with each other, or by trees. A meditator of 25 years, Manfredo says, “I would like visitors to leave with not just a visual impression of the forest but also with a taste or fragrance of the inner space which inspired it.”
"The
stones of Deva Manfredo are part of an imposing mosaic, which embraces all the
dimensions of the space, with symbolic configurations, mysterious pathways, unsettling
statues, palaces and fairy-temples and finally complex cities with architectonical
structures like courtyards, passages, towers, monumental gates..."
"It isn´t easy
to express with words what we see in front of us, but our soul knows it precisely,
our remembering knows these forms, the most forgotten stratums in our consciousness
get hit immediately- the contact happens in an instant. We don´t know how and
why, but it´s evident that we are exposed to an immediate fascination like lightning.
The message arrives without any mediation: it is beyond reason and control. It´s
significant to see how in front of these landscapes the more abused terms dissolve
like `culture, sculpture, archtitecture, land art, archeology, artcraft´ or simply
`play´or even `religion´: something before (or after?) the art.
This is the most
interesting and unsettling aspect:
You get the feeling to be the first person
"
-Anna
Casserino da Como-
