Public art is coming to Medway Community Garden and Mulberry Park & Food Forest!
The Charleston Parks Conservancy has earned a South Carolina Arts Commission grant to create and install two sculptures in Charleston city parks. The Medway piece is an interactive sculpture highlighting the new cut flower garden and the Mulberry sculpture will be a large dragonfly overlooking the pond in the park.
To bring these sculptures to life, we need your help! Thanks to support from the South Carolina Arts Commission, we’ve already reached HALF of our fundraising goal. We are calling on the community to raise the remaining amount in order to introduce one-of-a-kind artwork to your parks.
About Sean Berube
Sean Berube is a Charleston based sculptural blacksmith who specializes in combining traditional forging techniques with modern fabrication to create highLY detailed sculptural works. His art reflects his love of flora and fauna and celebrates the natural world around us. He is passionate about his work and his mission is to impart a love for the beauty and wonder of nature and the miraculous creatures we share our planet with.
Sean has lived in the Charleston area for 6 years, attending the American College of the Building Arts, and establishing his own sculpture business in the city. He also works as the sculpture studio manager at the College of Charleston, training young artists in the craft of making. Sean gets inspiration for his work through volunteering with the Conservancy at Gather & Garden in Mulberry Park & Food Forest.
Blacksmithing has long roots in the lowcountry. Smiths like Philip Simmons, Christopher Werner and Julius Ortmann have shaped the aesthetics of the homes and parks of Charleston since the city’s founding, and through projects like this, can continue to shape it in the modern day.
The Mulberry Dragonfly
The proposed Mulberry Dragonfly is a twelve-foot-tall sculpture featuring a slender blade of grass rising out of the ground and a large hand-forged steel dragonfly. Sean’s maquette (below) is a simplified example of what would be a more intricate display of wings and details on the finished work.
The sculpture will sit near the entrance to the Mulberry Food Forest, acting as a place marker along the West Ashley Bikeway, encouraging viewers to engage with the park.
Mulberry Park and Food Forest is especially meaningful to Sean as this is the park where he volunteers.
Mulberry Food Forest is the first public food forest established in South Carolina. Created through funding from the South Carolina Forestry Commission, Trident United Way and Bank of America, the food forest provides free, low-barrier access to fresh fruits, nuts, berries and other edible plants grown within a diverse, seven-layer perennial ecosystem.
The Medway Community Garden Interactive Floral Sculpture
The proposed interactive flower sculpture at Medway Community Garden will feature a sculptural stone base blooming with hand-forged steel flowers, each designed with fluted stamens that allow visitors to arrange fresh-cut bouquets. Rising from the center of the installation will be a striking three-foot-wide flower, inspired by Sean’s maquette (left), while handcrafted butterflies will perch throughout the piece, celebrating the pollinators that make the garden flourish.
The sculpture was inspired by Medway’s thriving cut flower garden, which was expanded during the Medway Community Garden Renovation with support from HDR Young Professionals. Today, the Cut Flower Program provides fresh bouquets for underserved women and families while also serving as a therapeutic program space for Postpartum Moms of Charleston to engage in low-impact gardening and flower cultivation.
Sean Berube and Becca Hudson, our Gardens Engagement Manager, worked together to imagine an interactive art piece that would give visitors and gardeners the ability to create their own bouquets and beautify the space, symbolizing the intersection of art, stewardship and the natural world.
To learn more about this project, please reach out to our Development Manger, Caroline Rothkopf at crothkopf@charlestonparksconservancy.org and to donate, fill out the below by selecting ‘Medway/Mulberry Art Sculptures’ in the dropdown menu.
This project is funded in part by the South Carolina Arts Commission which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.