My project last semester focused on a more natural setting and the transcendental experience. It also noted a loss of more natural spaces and experiences. This semester I have examined the environment I spend my day to day life in rather than a space I escape to. I am deeply aware of the obvious scientific environmental concerns that exist. I am exploring the deeper philosophical implications of interactions with nature. I am exploring the constant battle for balance and order and the constant tendency toward disorder.
I came to the subject matter for this project as I sat in a park sketching trees. I quickly realized that instead of reflecting on this place I escape to I should instead reflect on the space I interact with on a daily basis. I began taking photos during my daily transit from the suburbs to the city. I walked around the city in the area surrounding my studio making observations and taking photos. I drew from the window of my house and photographed my neighborhood observing the patterns and nature existing in these spaces.
What I observed was a grid of concrete and glass towering over steeples and columned institutions. Nearer my home I saw the suburbs as a constant repetition of trees, mailboxes, and flowerbeds. I began to be very aware of the constant change taking place around me. There was this mix of old and new, a constant cycle of growth and destruction and growth again. The push toward order was constantly being challenged by nature and time.I came to the subject matter for this project as I sat in a park sketching trees. I quickly realized that instead of reflecting on this place I escape to I should instead reflect on the space I interact with on a daily basis. I began taking photos during my daily transit from the suburbs to the city. I walked around the city in the area surrounding my studio making observations and taking photos. I drew from the window of my house and photographed my neighborhood observing the patterns and nature existing in these spaces.
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In questioning the grid I looked to geometric abstraction. The geometric form can be seen as an escape from reality. The artist Agnes Martin spoke of the square freeing one from right and wrong. She said, “Now I’m very clear that the object is freedom”. (Stiles, p.31) She stated her work was “anti-nature”. I began to see this “anti-nature” as an escape from the soul.
The cube is an escape from the constant cycle of life and death. It is an escape from the unknown. The box is the place of business where one carries out the day to day routine. Geometry is reflected in the flat patches of land cleared away for rows of houses decorated with rows of trees and shrubs and mailboxes and lamp posts. There is order upon order.
While the square, and order as a whole, can be an escape, it doesn’t really free us from anything. The artist Robert Smithson said, “Grids and plans subdivide the Earth into a global map. Conflicts among all these orders produce disorder, which is not the absence of order but rather a disparate combination of many orders.” (Smithson, 150)
The piece hangs from the ordered grid of rusted concrete reinforcement steel. It is suspended from a network of yarn and thread. A vine grows from the gridded pattern and begins to break from the grid as it moves toward the bottom. In contrast to the grid, the ground is a tangled network of vine created from yarn and thread. The middle of the piece is a layering of thread drawings composed on a delicate sheer fabric. Rows of trees, lamp posts, and windows as well as abstracted construction barrels and signs are “drawn” with thread into sheer fabric. The fabric has an ephemeral quality that facilitates the discussion of the fleeting nature of both the manmade and life in general. The gridded city begins to give way to meandering vines toward the bottom as nature takes over and the cycle is repeated.
In the winter when I started this project the trees were bare and the only colors were from the bricks and stone in the surrounding architecture. Looking out from my studio window there was no sign of the change of seasons, no green. My view consisted of nothing but buildings and a sliver of sky. In my project the color creeping in comes from the vines that invade the city and the grid above. The green is both a sign of new life and a reminder that the manmade does not endure.
In exploring the philosophy of the landscape last semester I researched Immanuel Kant. This semester I turned more to science. I investigated such scientists as Edward O. Wilson who talked about the importance of nature to our well-being. Wilson coined the term “biophilia”, or love of nature. I looked at the research of Nancy Grimm at the University of Arizona. Grimm’s research studies the impact of the mega city on the environment. Grimm acknowledges the negative impact of the mega city on the environment. She holds out the hope that the city can also be a place of positive change.I read about and had a studio visit with Dr. Nalini Nadkarni who researches the environmental impact of the loss of the rainforest canopy. Dr. Nadkarni also is a promoter of biophilia. It is her involvement in many communities to promote awareness that interested me most. Dr. Nadkarni has spoken to religious groups about the spirituality of trees and the effect of trees on healing. She has set up programs that allow interaction with plant life in prisons. She continues to interact with artists, musicians, dancers, and other scientists to promote her findings. I am interested in scientific fact but feel, as do these scientists, that interactions with nature go deeper than surface concerns of ecology. The spaces we inhabit and create for ourselves have a deep effect on our well being. While most realize the effect of lifestyle on the environment, Dr. Nadkarni acknowledges the effect of the environment on man as well.
This piece is not just an environmental reminder of the impact we have on our planet. The piece speaks of man’s tendency to create change without giving thought to the outcome. It speaks of his desire to compartmentalize everything into order and box it in. It acknowledges the importance of the natural in one’s daily environment.
Some sense of order is necessary to survival. Opening a dialogue that encourages people to come out of their boxes provides a hope that we may strive to find a balance between man’s need for order and nature.
Bibliography
Stiles, Kristine, Peter Selz: Theories and documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artist’s Writings. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press, 1996Smithson, Robert: Spiral Jetty. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press, 1972
