This summer I joined the
MFA in Visual Studies program at
Pacific Northwest College of Art. It was an amazing experience — I can’t say enough good things about it. As part of our summer intensive, we had the opportunity to spend time with sculptor
Lee Kelly (what a generous and amazing person), and to make our own work at his woodland property and sculpture garden.
I was so inspired by my visits there that I created two ephemeral installations. Each one took a day to install and remove. There's something profound about the idea that something/someone can be present to us one moment, and then gone the next. Like a fragile spiderweb that exists in nature, so do these pieces.
The web piece was suspended about waist-height. I moved through and between each strand as I built it, like a dance. The process of creating it became primary; more important than the finished installation. In fact, it took me over four hours to build it, and about ten minutes to destroy it.
This smaller piece was created earlier in the summer. I found a branch in the woods and used cotton twine wrapped around two trees to suspend the branch in mid-air. It occurs to me now that suspension and gravity are themes the recur often in my work.
