Blades and Swarms Installation

This was a piece several months in the making and transforming in my head several times over during the course of construction.  There are several components to this work, and several different concepts being applied and considered.

It started as a way to approach the organization of grass blades and the tufts of grass that have been left to grow a little longer before being cut.  When you get down on the ground and look at them straight on you notice curves and angles other than vertical, which add to the grass' appearance of being a blanket of green from a distance and being dense and fluffy from standing height.  I created these wooden clusters based on that exploration.  

After a while I had several of them and wanted to play with their display, and thought about how people interact with sculpture and other objects as they are on the ground.  So I decided to hang them from the ceiling, asking, "Does the extra concentration and grace it takes to navigate through and around the sculpture change the perception of the viewer?"  

The work is also put together in a very loose way, with no concern about craftsmanship or seamlessness in the end result.  There are several reasons for this.  I wanted to make something adopting a different method and approach than my usual to see how it would effect the creative process, and to balance out my work on other projects (which at the time were carefully made, repetitive, and thought out before making).  The clusters of wood were assembled rather quickly, though mentally laborious, so I could only do about an hour at a time.  The mental labor was the act of making a decision with every piece of wood attached.  And they couldn't all be planned out, because next decision would be based on the one before it.  That was rather tough for me.  The quickness of making was freeing, allowing me to spend more time thinking about display, making decisions, and not feeling rushed to finish.

Once I started installing into the Niche space I had access to, I maintained the shody-ness of the work with the frame I built and choosing to staple gun the fabric onto it.  One of the purposes that I wanted to maintain throughout the making of this piece was the looseness of it.  Being too careful with any aspect of it would have changed things, and I wanted to see what my personal hangups with working loosely were.

The swarms placed on the fabric is a reflection of what I observed while building this piece.  Bugs kept landing on the fabric, hanging out there, along with seeds, dirt, leaves, etc.  I thought it was interesting (especially with the bugs) to watch this happen.  It was like they were looking for new territory to claim, and here it was, a brand new, unmarred surface of dazzling white cotton!