A few days ago I sketched a diagram for a sculptural configuration of rocks and mirrors. It is a series of 3 platforms. Two of them are connected. One of the two connected platforms is holding the rocks, this weight allows the platform that holds a mirror to hang suspended. Directly below the suspended mirror platform will be a platform containing a configuration of broken mirror shards. The space between each mirror platform will be exactly my height. I aim to create a tension between the rocks, the sheet of mirror, and the shards of mirror. There is a tension between my memories and who I thought I was. The resolution of this tension is the reconstructed identity. This piece will probably end up being used for my senior exhibition. There are a few questions that I am still trying to answer. What connects who I was born to be with who I thought I was? Is it a found object, a symbolic form? What is the foundation that holds each identity? Is it always the same? Is it opaque or transparent? What shape or shapes does the foundation take? 

Today I went to another location. The World’s Largest Basket is exactly that. It is a 7(?) story office building shaped like a picnic basket. It was the headquarters for the Longaberger Basket Company. I used to come here with my best friend. It was a sanctuary for her. In the shadow of those huge basket handles she felt comfort during some very dark times. It helped her to love where she was. It inspired her. I love her so I grew to love the basket. Most of all I love the memories created at this iconic landmark, even though they were during some difficult times. There has been a revival of love for this building that people once said would be torn down. I firmly believe that this new interest in the basket is in large part because my best friend shared her unabashed love for it with everyone she met. It reminds me of her strength and love.

I refined my project idea so I had to begin again. I walked 4 locations and collected a rock at each one. In chronological order: the park near where I grew up, the train tracks between the park and my once-home, the street and backyard of said home, and the Newark Earthworks. The significance of each location is different. 

The park is where I would go to be unsupervised as a child, leading to questionable decisions in my teen years.

The train tracks are the division between home and the park. I remember so many different moments here; crossing over to go to the fireworks at the park, running over to escape cops when we were out after curfew, walking along them to get donuts or ice cream. Then there was the traumatic video they showed us in middle school about the dangers of railroad tracks.

The home I grew up in is no longer home. The place that shaped me for 15 years was taken away during the pandemic. I remember wishing to move so many times as a child, feeling ungrateful for the roof over my head. Now that my family doesn’t live there anymore I miss it in a strange way. It was where I learned to ride a bike, where my sister was born, where I met my best friend, and so much more. 

The Newark Earthworks is a beautiful Native American landmark in my hometown. My paternal family is part of the Delaware Lenape tribe. I grew up hearing my grandparents talk about all of the history and traditions of the tribe, and once I had the opportunity to go to a powwow with them. As I grew older and began to understand more about Native American history, this became one of my favorite places. In hindsight it shaped my thinking in many ways, but most significantly it gave me an appreciation for the beauty of geometry, space, and large scale works.

I documented each place through video, photography, and selecting a rock. I carried a piece of mirror on my journey, which shows up in many of the photos and videos. The mirror is important because it symbolizes looking back, seeing oneself, developing a new perspective, and re-imagining my narrative. In the end I plan to use the rocks to destroy mirror(s). The impact of each rock upon the mirror is a cathartic act. When I hold the rock I am holding all of these memories. When I throw the rock I am letting go of the weight of my past. When the rock breaks the mirror the ego is shattered. This cathartic action is essential because without it I would simply be walking down memory lane, letting those emotions flow with no outlet. No longer being held prisoner by my past means the freedom to define my future.

A collection of excerpts from a poem by T.S. Eliot that relate to the concept of my first project.

 

“So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit”

 

“Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age

To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.

First, the cold friction of expiring sense

Without enchantment, offering no promise

But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit

As body and soul begin to fall asunder.

Second, the conscious impotence of rage

At human folly, and the laceration

Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment

Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

Of things ill done and done to others’ harm

Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit

Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire

Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.”

 

“There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment

From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference

Which resembles the others as death resembles life,

Being between two lives – unflowering, between

The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:

For liberation – not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past.”

 

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.”

 

― T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets

Source:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html

September 2: Lately I have been unsatisfied with my project plans. It has led me to try and figure out how my walking artwork will be different than those that I researched. So I asked myself, what is it that I am trying to get out of the work? Finally it dawned on me: I want catharsis. To revisit personally significant places, to review the memories and the emotion, and redefine my relationship with these places. The process has to promote reconciliation with my past. I will explore a theme that has always interested me, but never fit into my practice; destruction as a form of creation. In each of the locations I visit I will find a rock, or any kind of heavy natural object that is available. Before I leave, I will write something on the object. The text will relate to the reason I find the location significant. After all of the places have been visited, and all of the objects collected and inscribed, I plan to use these heavy objects to break mirrors. I’ve used mirrors as a symbol for the soul on a few occasions. The difference this time is that throwing the rock and breaking the mirror will be a form of meditation. I am trying to destroy the ego and redefine how I relate to my past. This is a very difficult subject for me to explain in text. I’m sure once I have completed the project then the meaning will become more clear. In the meantime, to try and guide my thinking, I am researching the Zen philosophy of “not two, not one.” Since I am struggling to reduce it in my own words, I will describe it as it is written in my notes for the class that I learned it (Philosophy of Death and the Meaning of Life- I highly recommend it!)

Not-two and not-one:

 

• We tend to approach the world with a variety of conceptual schemes.

• Do not bring along your preconceptions.

• Not-two: self vs. non-self, i vs. other. 

• There is no important difference between apparently different things.

• Not-one: a recognition of the particular roles you can play in the world.

• there is a time and a place for recognizing your individuality. 

 

I am currently reading to familiarize myself with the superstition of the broken mirror, and to dive deeper into the Zen philosophy. Here are the links to those readings. 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/#OveDua

https://people.howstuffworks.com/why-is-it-bad-luck-to-break-mirror.htm

September 1: I have been considering the mirror problem posed by Richard Feynman. The way that a mirror flips an image is along the axis. What you see in the mirror is what you would see if you stepped outside yourself and came face to face with your own image. What is the significance of seeing yourself as others would? Is it truly possible? How does this relate to the existential experience of dissociating when staring at one’s own reflection? Moving on to formal aspects of the project. I have been thinking of how I intend to visually frame the places of personal significance. Mirror has the capability to show us ourselves, and show us what is behind.

August 29: “Mirror in the sky, what is love?”; merge objects and mirrors somehow in the sculpture and in the video. The personal significance of the song (Landslide-Fleetwood Mac.)

August 27: My plan is to visit places that are personally significant. In these places I will document my journey through photo or video and collection of objects. In the final stage of the process I intend to assemble the collection into a three dimensional sculpture. 

I will research Nancy Holt, Richard Long, and Hamish Fulton. I chose these artists because their work is meditative. The elements of their processes that I intend to draw from are the documentation of personal history through physical space, and the condensing of complex experiences into minimalist forms.

This reflection on the past will be represented visually through pieces of broken mirror. Sometimes the mirror may appear in the video. It may also be visible in the final sculpture alongside collected materials.

Today was the first day I ventured out to a significant place. The world’s largest basket, also known as the Longaberger building, in my hometown of Newark. There are a lot of reasons this place is significant. It is the icon of where I am from. My close friend would spend a lot of time there during difficult times in her life. It became a place of solace and comfort for her. It became a representation of my home during the times that I was gone. Eventually it left my comfort zone when I had a negative experience during one of my visits. As time goes on, the unpleasantness has faded from my memory. Now when I go to the basket I am reminded of the place I was raised, and how my hometown ultimately affected who I am now.

Nancy Holt

http://www.nancyholt.com/holt.html

Going Around in Circles (1973) film – http://www.vdb.org/titles/going-around-circles 

–”Going Around In Circles continues Holt’s interest in perception and point of view.”

-filming through a prop

-playing with scale

 

 

 

 

Buried Poems (1969-1971) 5 locations – text: http://www.enverscompagnie.com/PDF/ouest_en.pdf / image: https://carlasologuren.com/luz-arte-nancy-ho/ 

-”The Buried poems are invisible and suggest the poetic presence of the landscape.” (page 7)

-Characteristics of each site reminded her of someone she knew, so she would bury a poem for them.

–Gives the addressee of the poem a brochure of the area that included history, geological descriptions, and specimens of natural objects found at the site.

 

Points of View (1974) four-screen video installation – https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/news/nancy-holt-points-view-parafin-london

-” The four-screen video installation Points of View (1974) reveals, as she notes in her journal, ‘the wonder of place through verbal description.’”

-Videos on the screen show the point of view of lower manhattan as seen from the windows of the gallery space in which it was installed.

-Transfer of information between mediums. From sight, to film, to installation.

 

 

 

Richard Long

http://www.richardlong.org/

Circle in Alaska (1977) Bering Strait driftwood on the Arctic Circle – https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-a-circle-in-alaska-al00212

-”‘A circle is beautiful, powerful, but also neutral and abstract. I realised it could serve as a constant form, always with new content. A circle could carry a different walking idea, or collection of stones, or be in a different place, each time.’ (Cited in Alison Sleeman, Richard Long: Mirage, London 1998, p.13.)”

-Ephemeral sculpture in a remote location.

-Circle sculpture within the Arctic Circle. Simple yet fitting way of merging the sculpture with the landscape.

-He traveled to this location with Hamish Fulton, the next artist in my research for this project.

 

 

 

Mind Rock (1992) Textwork – http://www.richardlong.org/Textworks/2011textworks/32.html

-Explanation of meditative performance art through simple typography.

-Symmetry in the text as well as the action.

-Beginning and ending in the same place, continuation on circular theme.

 

 

 

Untitled (1998) River Avon mud on sandstone – https://www.jamescohan.com/artists/richard-long

-Paintings created from native materials collected during his walks

-Continued theme of circles and body as the medium.

-Interestingly categorized under drawings on his website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hamish Fulton

https://www.hamish-fulton.com/hamish_fulton_v01.htm?detectflash=false

Seven Days Walking and Seven Nights Camping in a Wood Scotland March 1985 (1985) Screenprint – https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/fulton-seven-days-walking-and-seven-nights-camping-in-a-wood-scotland-march-1985-p77618

-Textwork describing one of the artist’s many walks in such great detail that the viewer can create an image of the journey in their mind, without needing a photograph.

-Part of his series called ‘Ten Toes Towards the Rainbow’; “The title refers to ten seven-day walks he made in the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland. Fulton sees seven as a magic number, and it recurs frequently in his work. Here it appears in the ‘rainbow’ of the title: rainbows have seven colours, while the word itself has seven letters.”

 

France on the Horizon (1975) Photograph – https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/fulton-france-on-the-horizon-t03268

-Caption on photograph reads: “‘FRANCE ON THE HORIZON – 21 MILES ACROSS THE CHANNEL / A ONE DAY 50 MILE WALK BY WAY OF THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER / ENGLAND SUMMER 1975’.”

-”Looking out over the sea he was reminded that England was once joined to the landmass of Europe and that this is the narrowest stretch of water between England and France. As a strategic position during wartime, it would have particular memories for those alive in the first half of the twentieth century (during the two World Wars)”

-Fulton contemplates on the sociohistorical context of the landscape as well as the formal characteristics. 

 

Slowalk (in support of Ai WeiWei) (2011) Collaborative performance – http://walkingartists.altervista.org/hamish-fulton-slowalk/ / video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCc8Rs4sOVY

-In response to the arrest and disappearance of artist Ai WeiWei. 99 participants and Fulton walked slowly, in silence, for two hours. Starting and ending with the sound of gongs. Took place at the Tate. Simple instructions provided to the participants.

-The walk as political activism.

-“They are the artwork but also the audience.” (3:30 in the video)

-Ephemeral, time based.