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The collection of photographs I have only serves as a documentation of the work I did at the site of Elm’s Beach. While some of the images are interesting, I think they only serve as a record or a shadow of the feeling of actually encountering these strange systems or ordered forms that I established on the roadway.
I chose to work on the roadway that lead up to Elm’s Beach first because it was a very accessible area and would not likely be disturbed by anyone, as it was closed to vehicular traffic at the time. But the road still served as a path for those on foot or bike—so it could still be encountered, but only in a very specific and personal way. The road also provided a nice “canvas” for me to work against—a basic color with little variation that I could place objects on and have them actually stand out.
It is important to note that the road is already an alteration to the natural environment—though not a substantial one. It is not paved, and it almost seems natural to come across these days. A dirt road reads as more rustic and natural than a paved road would, so I felt it still could go along with the language of earth and the natural materials I was using.
The materials that I did use consisted of litter from the trees—things discarded by nature. The series of lines and accumulations that I executed on my first couple days on the road were made of round, pointed seeds from single group of trees nearby. I gathered and re-accumulated the material in specific ways that at first did not read obviously as man-made. It was more subtle, and less directly ordered. I liked the idea that the viewer might come across these shapes and see them as natural things but then realize that nature could never have gathered them in these specific ways. First, it would be physically impossible for the wind to gather and stack or line these seeds up. Second, it would not really be conducive to the furthering of the tree species to just stack these seeds in piles, where the wind might not easily carry them to other locations.
I worried a little bit that my work really would alter the environment, because I was working with materials that could have or should have become future trees. I know I was working on the road, a previous alteration, but I didn’t really want these things to last. I wanted the insistence of human presence to last as long as nature would allow. It turns out that that would only be about a day’s time—upon returning the next day, the seeds had been dispersed by night winds. A day’s work: completely gone.
But this didn’t read as a loss to me—I wanted to make more—and have them be encountered by one or two people and then be taken away yet again. There was low traffic in the area, yes, because of the secluded environment I chose. The execution of the sculptures was more private, and so was the viewer’s discovery of these things I was making.
The gradation series started with small lines cutting the road across that eventually spread further and further apart down the road. When first entering the roadway, from a distance the leaves appeared to be just haphazardly spread by the wind. They could even read as some sort of dark water that flooded onto the dirt road, depending on distance and angle. The varying views of this work provided additional feelings that one had when encountering. Soon, the viewer discovered that the mass actually consisted of single lines that thinned out and vanished. Although in construction I basically eyed the distances and guessed, there was an effort on the viewer’s part to understand the system I was working other, as in whether or not these distances were exponential or otherwise specifically ordered.
I think that in the number of works here, I developed an interesting way of working within the environment. Given the specific low-traffic road, I was able to construct objects and spaces that used natural materials. I re-ordered and re-accumulated things, understanding that these objects would likely not be encountered or remembered. It was like a catch and release—I would resolve an issue with the materials (under rules of nature of course, with no outside materials), and then let it go when I left that day—understanding that it wouldn’t be there whenever I returned.
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