CONVERGING I: SOUTH AFRICA
CONVERGING I: STELLENBOSCH
CONVERGING I is a land art piece intended to serve as a living symbol of coming together created along the path of green that comprises the inaugural Garden Week Stellenbosch. 4,000 Eragrostis capensis plants, an evergreen perennial grass indigenous to the Western Cape, have been placed upon a literal point of convergence—Meulplein—the location where Bird, Mill, and Church Streets all physically meet within the city of Stellenbosch and which now houses De Nieuwe Molen.
These grasses are sculpted around and by the elemental:
Metal
River Rock
Sun
Wind
Time
These grasses are framed by our history, sometimes falling within its shadow, depending on the time of day and the location of the sun. This living land art piece will be watered from the rectangular reflecting pool that is fed by the Meulsloot, which is a part of the Eerste River Hydrological system.
CONVERGING I explores nature as art, as symbol, as witness: indigenous natural and living material, consciously grown, placed, and woven together by a diverse collection of humans. Placed with intention and care, onto this land we call home—a fertile earth filled with history and memory—both beauty and pain—to serve as a living talisman for the future that remains unwritten. With time, this living piece will evolve, the inevitability of nature. A reminder of how we, too, grow and grow well: as individuals and as a nation.
We are growing. We are merging. We are converging.
May we do so with care and consciousness. May we all have the opportunity to blossom. With grace. With tolerance. With intelligence. With the understanding that Stellenbosch is a university town and is itself a vibrant and crucial place of convergence: with a beautiful diversity of culture, of language, and of people, coming together to learn, to grow, and to flourish.
CONVERGING I is a place to gather. To pause.
A moment in time.
A reminder that we can and must create beautiful things.
And a reminder that we gather—we converge—to grow.
con·verg
/kənˈvərj/
(of lines) tend to meet at a point.
(of several people or things) come together from different directions so as eventually to meet.
come from different directions and meet at (a place).
(of a number of things) gradually change so as to become similar or develop something in common.
Converge traces back to the Latin word vergere, meaning “to bend or to turn.“ The prefix con- means "with,” a good way to remember that things that converge come together.
“I want to speak the language of the grasses, rooted yet soft
and supple in the presence of wind before a storm.”
~Terry Tempest Williams
Pieter G. Colyn
CONVERGING I: Stellenbosch, 2021
Eragrostis capensis, woodchip created from alien vegetation removal in the Banhoek Valley along the Dwarsriver, 6mm steel sheeting plates
Materials: Langverwacht Nursery, OSW Cape (Ornamental Steel Warehouse Cape)
Construction: Langverwacht Landscaping
Text: Emilie Miller