Sculpture Studio Spring 2012

Project 3: Site, Place, and Installation

After learning project three concentrated on site-specific art, I knew I wanted to make something specific to the St. Mary’s community, so I brainstormed some issues that I believe are currently important to the student body at St. Mary’s.

I went about this project in a somewhat backwards manner.  I first had a concept that, aesthetically, I was pleased with, but I felt the piece lacked a core connection of site-specificity.  I spent some time thinking about what I really wanted the intent of my piece to be, what message I wanted to send, and I ended conceptualizing a much stronger foundation for my vision of my project three pieces. Instead of a one-dimensional concept, I came up with more protest/awareness and discussion provoking pieces.

The first piece I worked on is a bicycle wrapped with yellow and blue electrical tape.  The bicycle is stationary and consists of the frame, the fork, and handlebars. The partial structure and tape symbolize the St. Mary’s student.  I consciously chose blue and yellow tape to be representational of the St. Mary’s school colors, while the bicycle frame, incomplete, nonfunctional, is the strained and weary St. Mary’s student body.  The bicycle is wrapped to the point of strangulation, in silver chain.  I hope that from a distance the chain appears to be metal, but that as the viewer approaches the structure, he or she will perceive something slightly dishonest about the chain, will come to realize that the chain is not constructed from metal. 

Looking slightly closer, the viewer should be able to read, “Unchain me” on alternating pieces of the chain, which by now can be assumed to be made from paper.  I wanted to incorporate language into the piece to add a recognizable voice, to give the piece a more personal foundation.  A few metal locks strengthen the sense of security the chains present, but add a level of duplicity to the piece.  The relationship between the bicycle and chains is meant to represent the tension felt between the student body and the administration and administrative decisions currently being made on campus.  I deliberately chose paper as the material for the chains wrapping the bicycle frame.  From a few feet away, the bicycle looks as though it is completely trapped, secured, and confined, but when examining the piece at a closer distance, the chains are noticeably not metal.  The chain represents the barrier between the student body and its freedom of opinion and voice.  The strength of the paper chain demonstrates the strength of the administration’s power over the student body.  Although the chain appears to be secure, paper is easily broken.  If motivated and moved to, the students can overcome any obstacle or oppression. The protest and awareness narrative is not aggressively apparent, but I believe that the placement of the piece adds an undeniable context.  The placement directly outside the President of the College’s office, which is on the main floor of Calvert Hall, is extremely integral to the piece’s intended message.  The influence for the piece presides within feet of the piece and must pass it to enter and exit his office.      

Across campus, one can find the second portion of my project three conception. The second portion of my project consists of a pair of black rain boots, a stack of academic books, chained and locked, and a reusable tote bag. The stack of books rests on a bench seat outside Glendenning Hall, the rain boots are at the foot of the bench, directly below the books, and the tote bag hangs from the back of the bench.  The chains used in this piece are metal and plastic spray painted metallic silver, both representing the same tension and constraint felt by the student body that is present in the bicycle piece.  I hoped for the presence of a student to be understood from both the combination, as well as, the placement of the objects. The chain is actual metal and wraps around the books and bench, securing them while also limiting access to them.  The top book has two holes drilled into both front and back covers, through which a lock is placed, therefore concealing the book’s content.  The stack of books, both narrative and textbook, along with the tote bag and rain boots are placed in a way in which the viewer can assume an individual was once present.  The artifacts left on site are the remnants of this person; a void is created in the space.  The combination of the symbolic student and the chains harks back to the bicycle piece’s intention.  The student is weighed down, constrained by the unreasonable administration.  The placement of the piece is key to its function. First, the bench acts as a canvas for my found objects, and second, Glendenning Hall is the heart of much of the administrative decision-making made on the St. Mary’s campus.

Some aspects of both pieces I struggled with centered on how I wanted to portray my message—the means of display: material, structure, format, etc.  The concepts I ended coming up with focused mainly on the use of found objects.  As someone who has debated the definition of art as to include pieces such as Marcel Duchamp’s The Fountain, I was surprised that when it came to my own art, I had serious trouble reconciling my concepts’ lack of personal labor.  To appease my need to get my hands a little dirty, I incorporated elements in the bicycle piece such as wrapping the frame, fork, and handle bars in tape and creating the paper chain, which took days to cut, glue, and spray paint.  Both of there examples were by no means only manifestations of my desire to add my own work into the pieces.  Both the chain and tap were integral in my intended and provocative message. 

In the second piece I created, I wanted to step further outside of my comfort zone, while keeping some link to the bicycle piece.  Instead of making more paper chain, I used real chain.  The only physical labor that went into this piece was drilling the top book and spray-painting the less expensive plastic chain to resemble metal.  A concern I do have about the viewer’s experience with the second piece centers on the combination of literature and chain.  The viewer might interpret a message of censorship from the chained and locked texts from the author’s perspective, and not the student’s. The chained texts represent the voiceless student, and the student body’s struggle to overcome administrative obstructions.  The constrained texts should be understood as the student’s limited freedom of speech and expression instead of a more general and broad commentary on censorship.  To have more effectively portrayed this intention I could have added my own text, similar to the effect of the text in the bicycle piece.

While my hope for both pieces was to provide art that would allow students and campus community members to openly discuss the current topics of concern on campus, both pieces were also necessary for me to complete on a more personal level.  This year has been a trying one in many ways for me regarding my personal relationship with the College, and this piece allowed for me to express some of the emotion that I could not voice in any other medium.