A sprawling, glowing art installation with more than 4,000 elements, including moving, light-up pieces, has taken root beyond Shelter 3 at Mount Trashmore Park in Virginia Beach, transforming a familiar stretch of parkland into something closer to a nighttime fairy-tale forest. Called Where Wonder Grows: Sanctuary, the free exhibit opened Saturday and will remain on view through Dec. 16.
The installation comes from Skunk Control, an Australian art collective, and is presented by the Virginia Beach Cultural Affairs Department, according to WAVY. Visitors can walk through the piece during regular park hours, with extended access until 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the run, except on Halloween night, per vbpublicart.org.
The scale of the project is hard to overstate. Vbpublicart.org counts roughly 3,000 illuminated flowers standing three to five feet tall, eight kinetic peacocks with moving tail feathers, and 55 birdhouses rigged with kinetic birds and birdsong scattered throughout the grounds. The Virginian-Pilot also reports the display features 10 kinetic guardian flowers topping 17 feet that unfurl and close, along with 350 illuminated plants that glow after dark, as detailed by The Virginian-Pilot.
A Butterfly Count That Depends on Who You Ask
Just how many butterflies flutter through Sanctuary depends on the source. WAVY reports the installation includes kinetic flowers more than 17 feet high along with more than 1,300 butterflies, while the Virginian-Pilot’s count puts the figure at 600 butterflies, including 30 with four-foot wingspans. Either way, the fluttering wings are part of a display that, according to the Pilot’s reporting, took Skunk Control about a year to create and 13 days to install on-site…