Louis Buhl is pleased to present Studies for a Sculpture Garden, a new collaborative series of monoprints by Ellen Rutt and Aaron Glasson, created at Cedar North, a permaculture farm and arts facility in northern Michigan. Over the past several years, Rutt and Glasson have been developing plans for a sculpture garden at Cedar North, transforming the site into an evolving space for art, ecology, and community. Created alongside sketches, scale models, and time spent walking the landscape, these monoprints function as studies for that vision. 

Each print is a unique original made directly from materials gathered on site, including pine needles, coneflower leaves, herbs from the garden, and sand from the nearby dunes. Pressed into ink and transferred to paper, these materials become both image and record, a physical trace of a season spent observing what grows, changes, and endures. Throughout the series, an oval form recurs, echoing the former racetrack that now defines the landscape of the future sculpture garden. The shape evokes cycles of growth, renewal, and return while referencing the site's history and evolving identity.

The sculpture garden at Cedar North is envisioned as a living landscape where art, ecology, and community intersect. Rather than placing objects onto the land, the project explores how sculpture can emerge in relationship with it through earthworks, intentional plantings, and bio-based materials such as hempcrete and lime plaster. It asks how public art can be created in partnership with the land using materials that are resilient yet ultimately impermanent. Built to endure for a time, the works are intended to eventually return to the earth or become the foundation for future artistic interventions. Proceeds from Studies for a Sculpture Garden will support ongoing material research and the production of the project's first sculpture, scheduled for installation in Traverse City in summer 2027 as the first prototype for the larger vision at Cedar North.