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The Second Installation
When I close my eyes and think back on the site-specific installation I created last summer with two other artists located at the Lemon Fair Sculpture Park in Shoreham, Vermont, I find myself standing in a field filled with the sounds of crickets, tree frogs, and the whisper of tall grasses. I am brought back to many hot and humid summer afternoons with my dogs, tending to the silk fabric and taking photographs. I can recall the shadows of the crows that often circled above the trees close by and the occasional hoarse cry of a hawk hunting its prey. The silk pieces that hung within the steel frames had prints on them of abstract images of light and colors. The soft silk moved like water in the wind and glowed in the low-angled light of early morning and dusk. Solar lights illuminated them at night under a vast, open sky. The silk held the wind, rain, and sunshine in constant response to the elements. We decided not to give the work an official title this year, but it was a continuation of the question about what home means. The installation is the third one I have done using silk fabric as the main material. However, the installation deteriorated faster this summer than in comparison to previous years. The storms in July and August were more violent and unpredictable; winds were stronger and wilder. Vermont experienced terrible flooding in July, leaving thousands of people without power and homes. The park flooded, but none of the sculptures were damaged. The installation was situated on a knoll, and sometimes close by, the river overflowed into the fields, hosting a wide variety of water birds. Although beautiful and intriguing, the presence of these birds was odd and unsettling.
My experience at the sculpture park and tending to the site installations over the last few years has been consistently joyful and meaningful. However, this past year felt different. I often contemplated my ability to continue the work in the future because of the uncertainty and fear around weather due to climate change. Could the work survive the more violent weather patterns that were occurring more often? Would the work continue to be meaningful when sometimes ripped and frayed beyond recognition and repair from harsh storms? How far could the weather alter the site installation without it becoming a reminder of our climate crisis and grief instead of sparking imagination and wonder about the meaning of home? Or is this what it should become?
For people visiting the sculpture park, we hope for an embodied experience with the artwork thoughtfully placed and integrated into the landscape. However, by the time fall arrived this past year, the installation became more damaged, reminiscent of the destruction of homes in our state, including one of the artists involved in the creation of the site installation. Alternatively, I turned my camera lens toward the landscape to find answers to the grief, exploring the surroundings that had become quietly familiar in my periphery. I made monoprints in a printmaking studio with the colors of the fields, leaves, sky, and wildflowers. The abstract prints were fragments of architectural and natural spaces from my past infused with the sculpture park’s landscape palette. When I spontaneously merged my photographs with the monotypes, the essence of my own embodied experience surfaced, layered with memories of my time in the park, spaces of home, and places of comfort. The work felt inexplicably whole and authentic to the beauty while not concealing the sadness of what had been lost.
The steel frames currently stand empty in the winter landscape, creating still slivers of long shadows in the low-angled January sunshine. The solar lights are in place but most likely buried beneath snow and ice. I think about the frames as vacant windows in the barren field, wondering what will hang within their interior edges for the next iteration of the site installation. I feel a responsibility to address our growing climate crisis, but I am still figuring out how. I do know that I will use the color of the deep, rich red of the fall sumac in the next silk pieces. I also know I will somehow incorporate the movement of windswept grasses in the fields. As always, I will create imagery to print on the silk that is illuminated with the natural light that always guides my creativity. For better and worse, I will begin the new artwork by remembering what was and wasn’t there.
Initial Sketches and Renderings:
