Air Garden by Ryo Yamada for the Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 paired with Carven Embroidered Sweatshirt.

For my newborn niece Cora: An art installation symbolizing the boundless possibility before you. On a park slope in Japan, Ryo Yamada has created Air Garden for the Sapporo International Art Festival 2014, currently underway. Yamada envisioned the piece as a passage, not in the standard definition of “a path connecting one point to another,” but rather the metaphorical sense of traveling to new, intangible realms. “My vision of the piece was to … connect the people with the passage of the garden from the infinite openness of the air,” the artist said. “Only air is equally available to people anywhere in the world, and I believe it is a symbol of equality without boundaries.”

Working as part of the Sprouting Garden exhibition, Yamada transcends the historical roots of the word “garden” – an enclosed or protected land built to protect property and keep out intruders – by creating an experience of infinite possibility, a procession into open sky. I love this image of two children atop the platform (both capable of doodles like those on this whimsical sweatshirt), one confidently striding forward, the other gazing out over the treetops, the land far below them, no fear, no fetters.