Description:
This integrated environment artwork 'Equestrian Oasis' is comprised of a sculpted berm with boulders and two saddle shaped forms made of concrete, placed to align with summer and winter solstices  at sunset. Other amenities included in the horseshoe shaped berm are a water trough with waterfall, timber hitching post and planting of sabal palm trees according to the Fibonacci's Golden Mean ratio. This is truly an unique place of respite awaiting both horses and riders.

Artist Statement:
art. stat.: "The Equestrian Oasis work is intended to be a gathering place for riders and horses. Its primary purpose is as a place to sit and enjoy equestrian life. It is a contemplative and a social sculptural landscape environment. The work incorporates symbols of equestrian life as a metaphor for universal meaning and understanding. It is a designed environment expressing the poetry of connectedness. The horse shoe shaped mound is the most obvious equestrian imagery and forms a cove facing east toward the show ring. It contains two decorative saddle shapes imbedded into the western high areas of the mound. If one is standing in the middle of the horse shoe shape at winter or summer solstice then one can witness the sun setting in the saddle. This evolved out of the Town's original name (still the name of the park): Sunshine Ranches. The saddle designs formed of concrete into the berm are like horse saddles but simplified and therefore somewhat like Einstein's theory of a "saddle shaped universe". The whimsical ambiguity is intentional. If the back of a horse is also the shape of the universe then the ides of connectedness takes on new meaning and gives us a lot to contemplate - "…as above so below". A special pattern of Sabal palm trees forms a puzzle that invites the participants of the environment into and out of the Oasis. The puzzle is a "Fibonacci Trail of Trees" that leads one from the outside of the horse shoe shaped berm to the inside and back out. That path followed mentally or physically, forms a fictive Lasso. The Fibonacci number series (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,1144 etc…) discovered in the 13th century by Leonardo Fibonacci, expresses growth patterns in nature and as a ratio, of adjacent numbers in the series, is referred to as the Golden Mean (1.618 or .618). It is a resonant frequency of creation. At the beginning of the area occupied by the work and before the beginning of the "Fibonacci Trail of Trees" is a hitching post that is proportioned using the golden mean ratio. A kind of introduction to the trail and ratios utilized in the work. There is a replica of the white horse of Uffington carved on one of the center stones. An emblematic curio acknowledging the forse deity of the Druids and re-establishes the ancient symbol as the "Golden Horse of South West Ranches". As one sits on the stones lining the horse shoe shaped berm one can observe the quiet waterfall into the watering trough and see the horses riding all round… A sweet and wondrous place to just be. If one chooses contemplating the connections this site makes through symbols that can also be an enjoyable and educational activity at the site."