Ten thousand handmade roses now hang on the outside of Aronson Fine Arts Center at Laumeier Sculpture Park (12580 Rott Road) in tribute to Missourians who have lost their lives to COVID-19. Each rose represents one life lost.
The sculpture, titled Rose River Memorial, has been in the works since August 2020 by artist Marcos Lutyens. It's part of the park’s Salutary Sculpture exhibit and comes to St. Louis as the area hits the second anniversary of the first COVID-19 case in St. Louis County.
Leaders of the exhibit and park gathered on March 6 for a dedication ceremony, telling the crowd gathered that Rose River Memorial is equal parts memorial and community project.
Dana Turkovic, co-curator of Salutary Sculpture says to the RFT there are multiple layers to Lutyens’ piece as the park marks this moment in the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You wanna say that [the pandemic is] over and I think it's moving in that direction. You never know, but it's still with us and it's impacted many people's lives,” Turkovic says. “What's represented in the roses are people's friends and families and in a sense, we are grieving loved ones, and we’re also trying to look at this installation as something that could help process loss or cope with that loss and move to a place of recovery from that. So what it is doing is going through all those emotions and using grief as a material in a way.”
Laumeier Sculpture Park extends that process to the public with this installation. The roses were crafted out of felt made from recycled plastic bottles in partnership with the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri.
While waiting to bring the exhibit to the public, the death toll exceeded the amount of roses the scouts and Lutyens crafted. As Missouri inches closer to reaching 20,000 deaths, the park had labs spread out during the reception for visitors to help create more roses to honor those who have died. Some troopers were present for the ceremony and assisted visitors in making more roses for the sculpture.
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Girl Scouts and visitors gather in the Kranzberg Education Lab to make more roses for the sculpture.
Turkovic says there will be other days where visitors can help make more roses if necessary.
Interfaith leaders were present at the dedication ceremony, offering condolences and praying with the crowd as they marked the loss. The leaders stressed the importance of being there to bless the memorial so they won’t be the type of people to forget.
Salutary Sculpture looks at health and wellness, with a focus on the healing of the mind, body and spirit spread throughout the exhibit. Lutyens joins seven other artists in the exhibit. While timing prevented Rose River Memorial from coming to St. Louis immediately, Turkovic and her co-curator Lauren Ross of Salutary Sculpture knew Lutyens’ work would be perfect for the work they were doing. With the overarching theme exploring capacity as a therapeutic tool, Turkovic says this sculpture does just that.
As the ceremony came to an end, the roses swayed in the wind – a sea of reds and pinks, each representing a loved one. The crowd cleared: Some headed home after bowing their heads in prayer for those lost, others headed into the lab to craft a rose to add on to the chain of roses.
Laumeier Sculpture Park will be part of a virtual event on March 7 that showcases events and stories across the country as part of an effort to establish a national COVID Memorial Day. Find more information about the event here.
Salutary Sculpture and Rose River Memorial will be on display until May 15. Visitors can view the artwork inside the Aronson Fine Arts Center Thursdays and Fridays from 12 to 5 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Laumeier Sculpture Park is open every day from 8 a.m. to 30 minutes past sunset.
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Ten thousand roses hanging from the Aronson Arts Center, all representing a life lost to COVID-19.
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