Angela - Site Specific

04/05 UPDATE

All done! Glad to have finished off the semester with a brighter, lighter, and more fun creation. The following is my statement for the piece, titled "2 -09" after the license plate of the truck bed. :)

"2 -09"

    Like many, wintertime in the mountain west can be a time of real struggle for myself. The cold, harsh days, and even longer and more brutal nights, seem to take a real toll on my productivity and psychological state. One becomes stir-crazy when it is difficult to leave the house, and when little traveling can be done outside of the home and city. I take comfort in the ability to hike and explore the mountain landscape, but am unable to do so during the winter. The wintertime also has the effect of painting everything around us in various shades of white and brown, the living nature and brilliant colors of our world temporarily buried. 

    When springtime arrives after a Wyoming winter it feels quite merciful, and often foreshadows a wave of productivity and relief in my life. Flowers, the literal and metaphorical symbol of this rebirth, are a welcome sight. I always look forward to being able to garden once more in the spring and summer, and have a strong relationship with plants in my care. This work is a creation of colorful flowers from felt, one of my favorite soft materials, and aluminum, which are installed at a site of decay clearly wrought and encouraged by the harshness of wintertime. The truck bed, obviously abandoned, left to rot, is evidence of human waste, and the draw of this site is its patina and very apparent material destruction. The flowers call attention to this wasted object, as well as its surroundings, which were rich with garbage when I arrived. 

    The gallery space manifestation of this work, which presents the felted flowers, detritus, and thistle from the site, asks a viewer to consider this decay and waste, as well as confronts them with questions of the real and synthetic, the natural and man-made, the literal thing (in this case artwork) and its reproduction. I hope that this piece reminds a viewer that from darkness and difficulty, in time, comes lightness and joy.

04/25 UPDATE

The process of making the flowers for this piece has been coming along well, so far I have a few clusters' worth of small flowers felted and a few larger ones. I decided not to attempt to replicate any particular type of flower - keeping them more free-form allows me to make them a little more quickly. I'm experimenting with how soft/dense I want the flowers to be. Some of them are going to be felted a little more tightly, some of them not so much. I've been debating what sort of material to make the pistils and stems of the flowers from, the latter of which is going to have to be rigid enough that they hold up in the wind. I'm thinking some lower gauge aluminum or something along those lines - though it may be hard to paint the surface. I'd like to maybe bring some beads and shiny elements into the pistils and insides of the flowers so that they catch light a bit more.

Since this truck bed is technically private property and in a location that is unlikely to be seen by passersby, I'm probably only going to leave it up for a day or two, but I'll shoot some really good photos on film and make some nice prints for display.

Feeling good about where I'm at. Need to visit the site soon and sort how I would like to attach the flowers into the truck bed - if they're wire, I should be able to simply wrap the stems into different cracks and crevices.

04/12 UPDATE

Hey all,

Attached is a sketch for my final concept, the truck bed - I think that this is the piece I'm going to end up doing, as it seems most achievable within the window of time we have and the felted parts of the piece can be easily preserved after, as opposed to the reeds or the storm drain, which would not be pieces that could be easily preserved upon de-install. 

I'm trying to sort out what type/color of flowers and botanical elements I'd like to felt. Sakura (cherry) blossoms come to mind and are extra-spring-y, but do feel a bit clichéd. I'm considering attempting to replicate local florals and grasses as well, though I worry they might be a bit small and delicate. Any suggestions here? Thanks!

 04/02

    Hello again everyone. :) The following are concepts and images regarding what I'll be doing for my site specific installation, due 05/04. This piece is feeling sort of lost on me, I am perhaps too comfortable working within the context of a gallery space.

    This is the first location I have in mind. This location is the site of a very traumatic event which took place in my life a few years back. I visit occasionally, and I walk around the area... I do not really know why, it typically depresses me. Nonetheless, for some reason I return. The field shown here is directly behind the property where it happened - can't do the piece in the property because it's an occupied apartment, and that would be really difficult for me psychologically anyway.

    I'm a bit lost as to what I should think up for this idea. The area behind the property is adjacent to a highway, with a few small trails around, and is filled with garbage. I do think that some sort of cleanup and utilization of this detritus could have a metaphorical significance, but I am unsure how I would craft it into an artwork.

    The reddish reeds visible in the upper left portion of this photo could be interesting to utilize. I think that there could be something beautiful in simply coating all the reeds in a non-toxic finish... Metal leafing, or something which reflects the daylight in a ghostly manner. Color could become a delicate and interesting addition, and the finish could be something which flakes away as the plants grow back into the spring - more potential for metaphor. I don't know if there is any use in trying to illustrate this first idea - it would be a thicket of reeds coated in a finish, that would be silly to draw.

The aforementioned garbage and debris could also be collected and painted or coated in some sort of interesting reflective finish, then organized, hung, or displayed in some fashion around the area. 

    My second idea is less personal in nature. I've been enjoying the material qualities of felt and fiber in my work a lot, and I think that the bars covering this storm drain near Monroe street are a good opportunity to utilize felting. Wool roving would be stretched in between the bars, and needle felted in certain parts to give it structure. The felt would be green & other springy colors, and would be interwoven with a number of different small felted flowers and floral elements. The ends of the fiber would drape in the water of the storm drain, hopefully seeing some rain eventually to activate that part of the piece. This work would reference the rebirth and regrowth of spring, and would interact and blend progressively with the grasses around as everything turns green once more.

 

    This final location is probably more up Jodie's alley than mine - This detached trailer bed is located behind the laundromat on the west side of town. Since it is someone's property (?) I might have to come up with a concept which is more ephemeral.

    In terms of relevant art I've been thinking about - It isn't quite an installation or debatably even land art, but I love this series of images of Andy Goldsworthy throwing found pieces of kelp up into the sky. They create a sort of line drawing in the air, and become like a performance as well.

 "Kelp thrown into a grey, overcast sky, Drakes Beach, California," Andy Goldsworthy, 2013

    I'm loving also this land work by Michael Heizer, which is literally just a massive, mile long gash in the earth. On it he says, "You can’t trade this thing. You can’t put it in your pocket. If you have a war, you can’t move it around. It’s not worth anything. In fact, it’s an obligation." I enjoy this idea, that of a stubbornly immovable and unmarketable artwork. Truly anti-capitalist in nature, I'm surprised I haven't heard about it before.

"Double Negative," Michael Heizer, 1969