Sentiments of Atsuya Tominaga, a sculptor and the founder of “Love Stone Project,” while travelling around the world. Vol. 2 High Line Park, New York, USA

What is the “Love Stone Project”? Surprisingly a new concept, it is a kind of art called interactive art wherein people I encounter at different parts of the world polish engraved heart-shaped stones that I bring along with me.


Hello. This is Atsuya Tominaga.
Last time I talked about Central Park in New York where the first stone polishing of Love Stone Project took place abroad. This time let me tell you about the things I encountered the following day.

Still excited having learned that people are connected with each other regardless of different languages and cultures, I headed over to High Line Park the following day. This is the coolest park now in New York.
This park is located on Manhattan’s West Side and was recycled into a park from disused elevated tracks for cargo trains. It’s 3km in length, 20m in width and elevated 10m from the ground.
An equivalent in Osaka would be the Osaka Kanjyo-sen (Loop Line). Imagine some disused part of the Kanjyo-sen is recycled into pathway as it is.
There were several entrances that looked like overpasses. Carrying the heart-shaped stone on my back, I went up the one entrance closest to Chelsea district where all the modern art galleries were gathered together.

The park was filled with not only New Yorkers but also tourists from all over the world. When you take a good look around, you can see mementos of the once freight line, interspersed at different places in the park. This trendy park is designed with a lot of thoughtfulness in it.

I was looking for a good place to polish the stone, walking down south following the flow of people. This is it! I came across an area with a water feature.

I need water to polish the stone, so it was perfect.
I took out the heart-shaped stone from my bag and started polishing with the streaming water.

In no time, curious people from different parts of the world started crowding around the stone

What! Among them was the little girl who polished the stone with me the previous day at Central Park. I got to see this family from England two days in a row during their visit to the US. I couldn’t help uttering the English phrases that I’d just learned in New York.

“Just polishing!”
“Join us!”

The little girl approached me and started polishing the stone. Another little girl came, and another and another.

Many children visiting NY from different parts of the world were crowding around the heart-shaped stone.

10 people, 50, 100, 200…

A gentleman who was watching said quietly, “This should be done in Gaza, not here…”
Yes. At this time, war had broken out in Gaza and it was still growing.
With this thought in mind and surrounded with children’s smiles, I was polishing the stone when a big police officer in a uniform, like the ones you would see in movies, slowly came walking towards me from a distance.
Then he stopped in front of us and looked at me with sharp eyes.
“You can’t do that here.”
Then he watched what we were doing, and his expression softened.
“I’m going to go around the park once, so by the time I’m back you should stop what you’re doing.”
He turned around and left. Ten minutes later, by the time he was back, I had already put the shiny stone back in my bag.
This incident at the end made my heart pound, but in the 2-hour stay at High Line Park, I was able to discover that there is an unlimited possibility hidden behind the polishing of this heart-shaped stone.

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Atsuya Tominaga
Sculptor

(Founder and) leader of the “Love Stone Project,” a heart-shaped stone polishing project by people at different locations around the world.
[Love Stone Project]
Polish the Universe
Connect with the Universe

1961 Born in Osaka
1986 Completed his post-graduate school at the Kanazawa College of Art, received his degree in Arts and Crafts Studies, majoring in Painting and Sculptures
1988 Received an award in the Osaka Nakanoshima Ryokudo Sculpture Competition, an open competition
1990 Received the 3rd Sanda Sculpture Competition Special Award (Hyogo Prefecture)
1997 Received a grant from Pola Art Foundation to live in Italy for a year and work on art productions
1998 Chosen 1st place for the Kobe Gakuin University 30th Anniversary Monument Competition (Hyogo Prefecture)
2013 His works were collected and can be found at the LongHouse Reserve (New York)
Founded the “Love Stone Project”
Received an Excellence Award at the 25th UBE Biennale (International Sculpture Competition) (Ube City)
2014 Held an exhibition entitled Atsuya Tominaga’s Hard Boiled Exhibition: The Future Sculptures that Connect the Universe (at Tokiwa Museum, Ube City)
Held solo exhibitions In New York, Paris, Italy, Tokyo, Osaka and other locations in and outside of Japan