Internationally celebrated visual artist and former Detroiter Nick Cave returned to Michigan this week for the unveiling of his first permanent public outdoor sculpture, at Grand Rapids’ Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.
The 26-foot-tall, bronze “Amalgam (Origin),” the latest addition to Meijer Gardens’ collection of more than 300 international sculptures, was installed on the Gardens’ North Path near the Richard & Helen DeVos Japanese Garden and Michigan’s Farm Garden, and opened to the public Oct. 3. The sculpture depicts a bigger-than-life nude male figure that starts down at the toenails and stretches upward, running toward the sky until it bursts, mid-torso, into dozens of tree branches that continue reaching up, with birds nesting among them.
Nick Cage’s bronze “Amalgam (Origin),” unveiled to the public on Oct. 3, 2025, at Grand Rapids’ Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.
“We’re committed to sculpture and nature,” said Suzanne Ramljak, vice president of Collections & Curatorial Affairs for Meijer Gardens. “And we’re committed to splendor of the human experience. This work, like the word ‘amalgam’ in the title, just brings it all together. It is the perfect embodiment of everything that we devote ourselves to here: art, nature, the human experience and the potential of individuals to be mighty and strong.”
Cave’s career began in metro Detroit, when he was a student at Cranbrook Academy of Art, and he credits the school and the city of Detroit with shaping his path forward.
“A great professor, Gerhardt Knodel, told me that I could dream as big as I wanted – and that was everything,” Cave told the Free Press. “When I went to Cranbrook, I was the only person of color there, so that was a real, sort of shocking moment, but at the same time, I belonged there. So I made the best of it. It really changed my life, I would say.”
Cave’s relationship with Meijer Gardens began a few years ago, when he took part in an exhibition at the park and displayed a large sculpture of a man seated in a chair who, like the new piece, explodes into branches and leaves at the top. That sculpture, “Amalgam,” was inspired by the 1991 police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.
“I’ve been to the garden many times,” said Cave, “so I was very familiar with the garden and all the amazing sculpture that is set amongst the landscape. I mean, it’s amazing to be there with Roxy Paine and Keith Haring and Henry Moore and Louise Bourgeois and many, many others. The Garden creates this amazing backdrop for sculpture to live within landscape, and to have the room that these things need, and to be able to walk amongst them and around them and through them is really quite, quite lovely.”
Artist Nick Cave, courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Cave said he longed to work with bronze for several years before finally getting around to it.
“When people see this,” he said, “I want them to think about the stance – he stands with this feeling of determination, this sort of feeling of sternness, upright, as if he’s able to face the world. And yet, he morphs into this sort of trail-like sculpture that houses what I call a migration hub that’s built of all types of bird species. They say ‘birds of a feather flock together,’ and so it’s really about unifying and coming together collectively as a greater force.
“So I want one to be able to stand in front of it and to look up at it and celebrate the abundance of unity and think about ourselves as we continue to be in flight for our own destinies.”
“Now that Amalgam (Origin) has been integrated within the natural environment, the work’s catalytic power has been fully activated,” said Ramljak. “Nick Cave’s epic sculpture will stand as a monument to individual and collective strength, and to our profound rootedness in nature.”
While Meijer Gardens featured Nick Cave’s related A•mal•gam work in its temporary exhibit Forest of Dreams: Contemporary Tree Sculpture, Oct. 20, 2023 through Feb. 25, 2024, Amalgam (Origin) is Cave’s first permanent sculpture here.
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“It’s a joy to see Amalgam (Origin) take up permanent residence at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, stated Nick Cave. “After first sharing an Amalgam here in the Forest of Dreams exhibition, returning with a work that will meet visitors across seasons feels right. I made this piece for open air and changing light, and this landscape offers the kind of daily conversation with trees, weather, and people that brings it fully alive. As a Cranbrook alum, bringing my first major outdoor sculpture back to Michigan is a true full-circle moment.”
Cave received his master’s degree in fine arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1989, and returned in 2015 for “Nick Cave: Here Near,” in which he staged seven months of events throughout Detroit anchored by his first solo exhibition at Cranbrook. Cave is a professor at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago in addition to being an artist.“As we close our organization’s 30th anniversary year, we remain dedicated to diversifying our world-class sculpture collection with evocative works like that of Nick Cave,” said Charles Burke, President & CEO. “Amalgam (Origin) is a significant addition to our collection, and we are honored that he returned after exhibiting with us last year to choose Meijer Gardens as the home of his first public outdoor sculpture.”
Cave said “Amalgam (Origin)” also questions the idea of how we adorn our bodies.
“How do we adorn ourselves with self-worth and bring pride to that,” he mused. “The entire body is encrusted in this floral adornment that shelters and protects the body. That brings us to this space of transformation, the vision of growth and connecting to the motherland. It’s really cathartic and celebratory. I just love the fact that – give it a year or two – once the garden’s plant life starts to grow up around it, you will find that as you come up to the piece, it will appear as if he’s floating above the landscape.”
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He said he would also love to see real birds begin to nest in its branches.
“If that is the case, I don’t really want it tampered with,” he said. “I want to accept whatever happens. That, for me, is a connection (between) us as human beings to the world in which we live and which surrounds us.”
For more information about the permanent sculpture collection at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, visit MeijerGardens.org/sculpture.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Cranbrook alum Nick Cave debuts first public outdoor sculpture