The 18th"Stone in the Galilee" Symposium:

Marking the 60^th Anniversary of the State of Israel

And the 50^th Anniversary of Ma'alot Tarshiha

Connecting Art, Artists, Materials and the Environment.   This year, at the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of State of Israel's and the 50th anniversary of Ma'alot Tarshiha, we focused on Israeli Art.   14 Israeli artists who are leading in the field of sculpting have been invited to the 18th "Stone in the Galilee" sculpting symposium, to create new pieces that will be placed around the city.

The sculpting symposium is a one-of-its-kind artistic event during which the wide public is invited to be 'participating-spectators' during the actual process of creation and not only at the stage of the completion.   "Public" art, which refers to art in the public space, is an old tradition. It has existed since days of yore as part of a continuous dialogue man is conducting with his close surroundings and the wider world around him. The Israeli public space, which has been mostly dedicated to monuments and memorial statues has been somewhat "forfeited" to circumstances that requested to design the Zionistic Ethos.

The symposium seeks to achieve a reexamination of the manner in which decisions regarding the shaping of the public space are made through Arts. Artists who have been part of the designers of the Israeli environment for decades participate in the Symposium. Their work is exhibited in the country- in streets, cities, gardens and forests.   The symposium deals with the question of the change in courses of the sculpting of the present, it deals with the connection between art and the environment and it deals with questions regarding the essence of the object and the way it is exposed to the crowd (whether the sculptures should be exhibited in museums or in a natural environment, what are the parameters to define an object as a work of art).