Landscapes into Ruin

I like the way the Ruin series is developing. Having an unplanned starting point where I have to develop the work intuitively is something that I have come to enjoy. In some ways I feel this series is more successful than the planned work that it’s derived from. Looking for ways to reference time and a sense of loss, I’ve been considering combining the images from this series with images of the original work, show them as diptychs. 

I also made a new discovery, orthographic projection. When I first started working on post-residency sand paintings, I made a decision to depict each landscape through six photos. The decision was instinctual. Being drawn to multiples of 3, I thought 3 views were not enough, but 6 would give the viewer a more accurate sense of the piece. Orthographic projection is a method for making a 2D representation of a 3D object. It includes 6 views: top, bottom, left side, right side, front, and rear. When photographing my work, I have starting using this method as I choose camera angles. This will give me a tangible guideline to use when pairing the images into diptychs.

Where am I? Part 2: The Creek

There are a number of images that come to my mind when I think of my childhood home. My grandmother has a large back yard that is mostly comprised of lawn but also has a wooded area. When I was a child, my great-grandmother kept a large garden in the partial shade of the tree line. I have memories of watching her tend the garden. The neatness of the rows she made by digging with a hoe fascinated me. I was also particularly drawn to the scents of tomatoes, pepper, and watermelon that you can only experience from witnessing them ripen. She also grew collards, yellow squash, eggplant and okra. My most vibrant visual memories of the yard include swarms of fireflies and the shimmer of sunlight on the tree leaves blowing in the wind. The taste of fruit and nectar from blackberry and honeysuckle bushes growing along the fence also made lasting impressions. These are all topics that I aim to develop into work. 

Nevertheless, the work that I’ve completed so far has focused on one image, the creek that flows through the very rear of the yard. Beyond the fence, there are dozens of very tall trees, a small hill that seemed like a mountain to me as a child, and a creek at the base of a deep ravine. It seemed to me, at the time, to be as close to wilderness as one could get. Thinking back on it now, my grandfather always kept it raked and free of leaves, so it was actually just as well kept as the lawn. He used to dump the lawnmower clippings in the ravine filling the air with the intoxicating scent of  freshly mown grass. I’ve recently read that the smell of cut grass is actually a distress signal released by the plant. I find the my sensory experience of the smell compared to what it actually signifies, an interesting contradiction. 

I’ve always had a dualistic relationship with that the area beyond the fence, a mix of fear and curiosity. I played in the shade of the trees often but I never once ventured down into the ravine for fear of snakes or not being able to climb back out. I thought it was incredibly beautiful, but ever distant. When my grandfather passed away, the area beyond the fence became over grown and almost inaccessible. To me that landscape has become a physical symbol of a significant loss. The loss of a central figure in my life and the connection to the landscape that person gave me access to.

Experiment Gone Wrong...Update

I'm continuing to work on the outdoor installations. Last Thursday, I created a third piece in a different location. For this work, I brought more than twice the amount of media than I did for the original ones. In addition to seed, I also used spent coffee grounds and ground rice. I was very happy with the result. The installation was more vibrant and could be easily seen from a distance but it also blends seamlessly with its environment. I also enjoy the way the grass seems to grow out of it.
.

I visited both sites regularly throughout the weekend. By Friday, I found that birds (and perhaps something a bit larger) had discovered the first installations. I was hoping for a series of photographs showing the destruction of the work more gradually over time. All the same, I think the resulting images are pretty interesting. Today, I interrupted a murder of crows feasting on the most recent work but sadly they would not let me get close enough to photograph them. 

Experiment Gone Wrong

Sometimes ideas don't work out the way I envisioned them. For some time now, I've wanted to translate my sand paintings into outdoor installations. But, the more I thought about working outdoors the less appealing it seemed. I love the idea of making work that establishes a dialogue with nature but not the idea of using large amounts of sand colored with non-food safe dyes that could leach into the ground. Recently, I had an idea to use more eco-friendly materials, including bird seed, spent coffee grounds and rice colored with food-safe dyes. The other advantage to using bird seed is that (hopefully) the birds would eat it, creating some interesting opportunities to photograph the work in various stages of entropy and decay. After scouting for a place to conduct my first experiment, I found the perfect place. It was picturesque and near a marsh where it seemed likely to be frequented by lots of birds. I packed up some materials and set out to make it happen. After I started working, I realized very quickly that the media gets lost easily even in low-growing grass. It takes a lot of media (much more than I anticipated) to make the work stand out against the landscape. Revisiting the work a day later also revealed that birds have yet to discover my buffet of art and seed. The installation is disappointingly exactly as I left it. All is not lost however. I'll be back later this week with more media to give it another shot.

What is ephemeral? Part 2

There is something that really appeals to me about these ruined sand paintings. I haven't quite put my finger on it. It could be the idea of having to destroy something meticulously made and orderly to create something that has a natural beauty and effortlessness that the original never had. I enjoy the way the colors and textures mix so much that with this piece, I decided to use only neutral-colored sand to build the patterns surrounding it. I also tried to keep the pattern simple to emphasize the shape and colors of the ruined areas. The forms, depth, and color in this work seem more painterly and landscape based to me that its predecessor.

Landscapes of my Youth

It occurred to me this week that as a child I had an extremely vivid imagination. I found myself particularly drawn to stories, books and poems about fanciful landscapes. Endless hours spent playing alone in the yards, fields and woods of my youth, reading Eugene Field poems, The Secret Garden and other books with heroines living in whimsical, exotic worlds, playing Candyland, going to see The Nutcracker Suite, and watching films like The Wiz, Willow, The Neverending Story and Labyrinth fueled my daydreams. 

Although I still enjoy a good fantasy book or film, feeling dwarfed by trees and watching the wind blow through wildflowers, my feet are more firmly rooted in reality than they once were. I find myself wondering how much those early years continue to inform my work. The idealization of nature is something that I find visually appealing however, I also recognize that conceptually it can lead to attitudes about the environment and its inhabitants that are very selfish and destructive. 

When working on the second sand painting inspired by my Grandmother's backyard, I allowed myself the space to depict it with a pattern that was both whimsical and childlike, feeling it was appropriate for the subject. I also created this piece with the full awareness that the landscape it depicts is a place that exists now only in my imagination. Working in this way freed me from feeling the need to reference natural processes or the passage of time as I had originally intended. In making this work, I realized that referencing natural processes will require a completely different creative process which I plan to address this coming week. The passage of time I feel can be implied in several different ways. One of the methods I am working on is displaying the controlled pattern sand painting (shown here) with images of the new landscape created from its ruins (images to follow). 

What is ephemeral? Part 1

Taking time to reflect on the residency and formulate a plan to move forward seemed overwhelming back in June. There were so many different things I wanted to work on. In prioritizing topics to research and address in my work, personal connection and ephemerality come to the fore. 

Last month, I started exploring the entropic process of dismantling my sand painting. I've been thinking of creation and destruction as integral parts of the work. While evaluating last month's photographs, I decided to try combining areas of disorderly, blended sand from a dismantled painting with more controlled patterns. This resulted in creating sand paintings, destroying the original work, and creating a new, imaginary landscape from the ruins of the old one.

Where am I?

In a previous post, I wrote about trying to find personal connection with my work, infusing my experience into its content. I decided that it should be my top priority this semester. Last month, I began keeping a journal of memories associated with specific landscapes or interactions with nature. It didn't take long to realize that my own childhood backyard was full of potential possibilities for work. I resolved to limit my subject to imagery from childhood memories and stick to that for a while and see what develops.

In reading about landscape studies and the history of gardens, I’ve uncovered ideas about landscapes having the ability to connect people through nostalgia and shared experience. I’m also interested in the importance of gardens throughout history as an extension of the household, source for food and medicine, tool for maintaining family culture and traditions, and  the role of women as caretakers of the garden and guardians of family and its traditions. I think these concepts are very specific but still in line with the general direction I envisioned for my work which was to discuss human connection with landscape and nature.

For this series of sand work, I created patterns from memory rather than using reference images such as maps or photographs. I created a pattern inspired by a landscape that has changed a lot over time and no longer exists the way I remember it.  Additionally, I began to incorporate sand I collected rather than purchased and use ground rice to add a different texture and visual ambiguity. I spent a lot of time on the photo documentation, shooting from various points of view and distances to reveal the piece through a series of image details.