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THE POETRY IN NATURE AS FOUND
On Coming Into Being
Coming into being has meaning when it means something to everyone and everything, when everything in reaching up toward the light surpasses fear and judgement and comes into focus. It is no longer about the self, which is now free of judgement(s) and self-constraint(s)…
Being switches on to the fullest extent, yet being can never be complete in and of itself because it is connected to its roots and to time and to gravity. All of which are and always will be connected to everything else…
And to that end there is always a new beginning and each new beginning will have its own frequency and its own path…
On Dreams and the Gift of Floating
The beauty of dreams and the ability to float are found in representations of the history of individual struggles to come into being, but it does not reside there. It is not representations, but what can be captured from representations, their beauty and their gift, because representations belong to the realm of things and therefore remain tied to the body’s constraint(s) and to gravity and to time…
Dreams and the gift of floating are instead part of the realm of thinking and the memory(s) of coming into being and therefore reside in the realm of ideas…
And, just as the act of coming into being is a part of the day and the struggle to reach up toward the light from the sun, to surpass gravity and time; dreams and floating are by contrast part of the night and the light from the moon, and yet the moon is a mere reflection of the light from the sun; just as dreams are mere reflections from the days before…
Dreams are the memories free of gravity and time, free of the body’s constraint(s)…floating…
Floating is the gift of dreams…
And, bringing dreams and the ability to float into the realm of things is the gift returned.
About the Work: Conceptualization of the art work in my folio, specifically the Land Art series, begins with my graduate studies in Architecture and Urban Design at Cornell University in 1992 - 1995. Two cities were analyzed in depth, Savannah Georgia as an assigned project during the first semester and the selection of Berlin as the site of my thesis for the remainder of my graduate studies. In both cities the historical development of the urban centers were evaluated in relation to their social, political, and economic histories and then manipulated in relation to contemporary global issues of the early 90's, such as the dot.com revolution just then under way, the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Bloc several years before, and of course, as always, housing. My manipulation of these two cities involved, in general, the identification and excavation of key sites historically and politically and the insertion of materials and artifacts from an idealized global market into these excavations to reactivate them as a form of Urban Installation. To see the graduate work in Urban Design entitled "Toward the Prepared City" you can visit the Urban Installation Folios on this website.
Earlier, much earlier in fact when I was a youngster growing up in arid Idaho in the sixties, there were treeless hills directly behind my family's house where I would spend summer days digging small underground forts that I would cover with wood scraps from a nearby landfill and other available debris. As I look back there were two things that I remember being fascinated by in this activity; not only were the forts hidden from view in the low scrub, but I was able to control the natural light as it entered and filled the small spaces below ground and through this begin to modulate the inherent duality between inside and outside, it was almost as though the space could be made to emerge from the ground and reach toward the light. I realized only later, much later, that my interests in landscape and architecture started here, with a primal instinct for making space followed by my hyper academic training; a continual back and forth between making and reflecting. In 2010, I begun again exploring ideas of installation in relation to the ground plane, although now no longer limited to the rural arid landscape of my youth or the urban environments of my graduate work.
Land Art:
The Land Art series consists of a body of work proposed for non-site-specific and arguably non-urban landscapes. The scale of the individual pieces vary but in general are meant to be physically accessible by the viewer. As with the Urban Installation pieces in my Graduate work, the work in this folio continues to refer to the Earth Work artists of the late 60's and early 70's. References are made specific with the first three pieces in this portfolio, two by Michael Heizer and one by Mary Miss. But, where the Earth Work Artists as well as my proposals for Urban Installations at Cornell tended toward site specific installations, excavations, and extractions; the pieces in this folio remain non-site-specific. This leaves the work open and flexible to site specific analysis once actual sites are commissioned and my artwork can move forward into real space.
Studio Art:
The Studio Art series on the other hand consists of a body of work made without reference to another scale or time. The work is direct and of itself. In this series a solid wood pedestal, plank, or steel stand is often integral to the piece and no longer serves as a referent to the gravity and scale of the ground plane. This series is also predominately composed of foraged natural materials minimally processed as needed to complete the work.
In both the Land Art and Studio Art folios, as well as the graduate work in the Urban Installation folio, there is a pronounced interest in found objects, the recent history of which can be traced back to Duchamp's "ready mades." In general the artists who share this interest, and there are many to be sure, tend to find and shape their objects from the commercial environment. The findings in my Studio Art folio include materials from the natural environment as well, more in line with the ancient tradition of foraging. One of the important distinctions for me is that we are depleting the natural environment in almost inverse ratio to the extent that we are fabricating the built environment, commodities included. Sustainable goals trend toward small scale footprints, but in actuality this is generally not sustainable nor desirable for most individuals. This inherent duality can be found in my work and is important to acknowledge, if for no other reason than balance.
Models as Works of Art Themselves:
Isamu Noguchi, George Ricky, John Chamberlain, and many other artists to be sure make extensive use of study models for the analysis of composition, scale, proportion, shade and shadow, as well as fit prior to fabricating the commissioned art at much larger scales in site specific installations. These study models are often artworks in and of themselves. The same has been true with architect's for centuries. In the case of this portfolio, the models remain non-site specific and serve as examples of what might be a response to a site specific location once a commission is in hand. These models never-the-less constitute art works in and of themselves...
Photography Credits
All photographs of the artwork in this website are by Ella Sophie, unless otherwise noted. You should visit her website: www.ellasophiephoto.com