The founder of the Bergen Rocks International Sculpture Symposium said this year's edition was a tremendous success, even though it saw a slight drop in attendance over previous years.ìThe event itself was wonderful,î symposium founder Morton Burke said of this year's event, which was held in partnership with Red Deer College and rechristened as Bergen Rocks RDC. ìIt was great to see it move to a larger community than Bergen, where more of the public could access the event and enjoy it.îGiven that the event changed location this year, Burke said the decrease in attendance was a surprise, but not totally unexpected.ìI think that's quite understandable in that sculpture symposia are an unusual event and largely not understood in Canada,î Burke said last week. ìWhen people hear about a symposium I think they often usually think of professionals who are presenting papers amongst colleagues or theories or something else relating to their industry.ìTherefore people don't understand there's an element of the event that they'd be interested in, and that's the opportunity to observe these people creating the artworks.îThis year's participants ñ Italy's Alessio Ranaldi, Mongolia's Amgalan Tsevegmid, Korea's Kyoung Min Uk and Kim Bong Soo, China's Jiang Chu and Li Chao, and Turkey's Ebru Akinci ñ spent a month carving 100,000 pounds of marble into monumental works of art with the help of volunteers.The symposium's opening ceremony was on July 28 and the sculptures were revealed at a closing ceremony on Aug. 28.Burke said one of the most unique things about the symposium was how people from such diverse corners of the planet share the same values.ìIt's always interesting and enjoyable to bring people from different cultures together and see how they interact,î he said.While Burke plans to bring the symposium back to Bergen next year, he said he is delighted about the possibility of Red Deer hosting its own stand-alone sculpture symposium in the near future. He said RDC officials were excited about the contribution a symposium could make to the institution and the community.ìI think the most exciting part of that is that having held it in Red Deer will stimulate some groups in Red Deer to organize an event of their own in the future,î he said. ìAnd possibly there will be more of these taking place than simply the one I produce each year.î
