This was a proposal for a project called "Thanatopolis" --asking for outdoor works that explored the rituals of interment and memorialization.
(This proposal was for an outdoor art environment that was also a place of memory)
Imagine walking though a grove of trees, remembering someone you’ve lost. Something glints, catching the sun. You investigate, bending over a fallen branch lying on the leaves or snow. In the places where the branch is broken, it has been bandaged with gold leaf. Words are inscribed into the wood: "There is no vocabulary for this, the no-language of grief...so the world says it for me."
The above quote, (from "The Baffling Dead" by Irene Earis) is one example of the words and images that make up my proposed work, “Solace Grove”.
The work is highly site responsive. On the cemetery (Thanatopolis) grounds I will locate fallen trees and broken branches, and using pyrography, chisels, and ashes mixed with water and medium I will inscribe these fallen logs with text and images, and also delicately bandage the breaks, scars or bore holes in the wood with subtle touches of gold leaf. The texts and images chosen will be derived from research into appropriate sources (religious mythological, literary and historical). This is engagement with the natural environment in direct and respectful way, a meeting of nature and culture.
This project draws on our deep connections to woods and explores the grove as a metaphor: the forest as symbol of the deep psyche as well as the concept of the Tree of Life- a many branched construct which has been used in science, religion, philosophy and mythology.
Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. ~Rabindranath Tagore,
We Are Made One With What We Touch and See. We are resolved into supreme air ….Oscar Wilde
A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. ~Welsh Proverb
This was a proposal for a project called "Thanatopolis" --asking for outdoor works that explored the rituals of interment and memorialization.
(This proposal was for an outdoor art environment that was also a place of memory)
Imagine walking though a grove of trees, remembering someone you’ve lost. Something glints, catching the sun. You investigate, bending over a fallen branch lying on the leaves or snow. In the places where the branch is broken, it has been bandaged with gold leaf. Words are inscribed into the wood: "There is no vocabulary for this, the no-language of grief...so the world says it for me."
The above quote, (from "The Baffling Dead" by Irene Earis) is one example of the words and images that make up my proposed work, “Solace Grove”.
The work is highly site responsive. On the cemetery (Thanatopolis) grounds I will locate fallen trees and broken branches, and using pyrography, chisels, and ashes mixed with water and medium I will inscribe these fallen logs with text and images, and also delicately bandage the breaks, scars or bore holes in the wood with subtle touches of gold leaf. The texts and images chosen will be derived from research into appropriate sources (religious mythological, literary and historical). This is engagement with the natural environment in direct and respectful way, a meeting of nature and culture.
This project draws on our deep connections to woods and explores the grove as a metaphor: the forest as symbol of the deep psyche as well as the concept of the Tree of Life- a many branched construct which has been used in science, religion, philosophy and mythology.
Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. ~Rabindranath Tagore,
We Are Made One With What We Touch and See. We are resolved into supreme air ….Oscar Wilde
A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. ~Welsh Proverb