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Cliff Garten (born May 3, 1952) is an American sculptor who lives and works in Venice, California. He has completed over 50 sculptures throughout the United States and Canada.

Through his internationally recognized works, he is known as the sculptor who coined the term "landscape sculpture" engaging sculpture and landscape to share the same space and intention.

Life and education
Garten was born in Ridgewood, NJ on May 3, 1952. He studied at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, NY graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He went on to receive a master of Fine Arts in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI in the late 1970s and taught as a professor of art at Hamline University in Minnesota for 15 years. Garten left his professorship for a fellowship toward a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Garten moved to California in 1998 where he briefly worked at SWA in their Laguna Beach office and later established Cliff Garten Studio in Venice, CA.

Work
Garten believes in the expressive potential of public spaces and infrastructure to transform everyday plazas, bridges, streetlights, and wastewater treatment plants into inspiring experiences. He is best known for large scale public art installations utilizing stainless steel, bronze, granite, and LED lighting. The combination of these materials in his work reveal his embrace of "digital tools to sculpture" in which "art, architecture, ecology, technology, science, engineering, and urbanism, [are] not...separate disciplines but...tools for [his] work." Recent works falling under his philosophy of "landscape sculpture" include Suturis, Receptor, and Ribbons. Ribbons exceptionally exhibits this seamless integration of architecture and landscape where the landscape sculpture becomes a system of mutually interacting parts influencing each other. Foliage, a recent bridge designed by Garten, examines infrastructure as transformative to the public's engagement in public systems "whose brutality is often alienating." Garten's work continues to challenge new definitions of infrastructure in the public realm.

Career
In 1991, Garten was asked to design the half-acre St. Paul Cultural Garden in Minnesota where he created a six-room park that inserted text into stone elements from poets including Sandra Benitez, Soyini Guyton, Roberta Hill Whiteman, John Minczeski, David Mura, and Xeng Sue Yang as well as a mosaic by Ta-coumba T. Aiken and nicho tracery by Armando Gutierrez, whom he had invited to respond to the site overlooking the Mississippi. This collaboration addressed voices of difference from immigrants past and present within the community. The project was highlighted by Lucy R. Lippard in her 1998 publication titled The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society. This was a transition point in Garten's career when he decided to engage the entire landscape rather than a single object. Garten's ideas on landscape sculpture have been inspired by the site-specific work of artists such as Robert Irwin (artist), Richard Fleischner and Siah Armajani, among others.

In 2001, Garten co-authored The Public Art Framework and Field Guide for Madison Wisconsin with the group called The Place Making Collective including himself, Christine Podas-Larson, and Regina M. Flanagan.

Garten has created public art for organizations including the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, San Francisco Arts Commission, the Forth Worth Public Art Program, and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Garten has designed public art master plans for the City of Calgary co-authored with Via Partnership in 2007, the Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Department and Todd Bressi in 2007 and St. Paul, Minnesota in 2013.

Garten has collaborated with Quick Crete Products Corp (QCP) to create the Agora collection of site furnishings including a bench, table, waste container, bike rack, bollard, and planters made with recycled and cast concrete.

Selected Awards and Grants

 * Americans for the Arts, Public Art Network (PAN), year in Review Award for an Exemplary Innovative Public Artwork, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2017.
 * This American Architecture Prize, Honorable Mention, 2016.
 * American Society of Landscape Architects, Quality of Life Award, 2014.
 * Americans for the Arts, Public Art Year in Review, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2014.
 * California Preservation Foundation Design Award, Rehabilitation, 2014.
 * Construction Management Association of America (CMAA), National Project Achievement Award, Buildings Renovation Modernization, 2014.
 * American Society of Landscape Architects, Northern California Chapter, Merit Award, 2010.
 * American Society of Landscape Architects, Professional Design Award, 2006.
 * Archibald Bush Foundation, Artist Fellowship, 1995-97.
 * Archibald Bush Foundation, Leadership Fellows Program, 1989.
 * Jerome Foundation, Visual Arts Travel and Study Grant, 1989.
 * National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artist's Fellowship, 1986.
 * National Endowment for the Arts, Regional Fellowship, 1985.

Selected Awards and Grants

 * Ethereal Bodies 8, The Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, San Francisco, CA, 2015.
 * Los Angeles Opens Its Heart of Compassion, The Vermont Building, Los Angeles, CA, 2014.
 * Luminous Crossings, Gateway Station for the 7th Avenue Light Right Corridor, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 2013.
 * Ribbons, 50 United Nations Plaza, San Francisco, CA, 2013.
 * Baldwin Hills Gateway, Ken Hahn State Recreation Area, Los Angeles, CA, 2013.
 * Bullet and Suspect, Denver Crime Lab, Denver, CO, 2012.
 * Avenue of Light, Lancaster Avenue Median illuminated Sculptures, Ft. Worth, TX, 2009.
 * The Saint Paul Cultural Garden, St. Paul, MN, 1992.