When my pieces are installed they are being born to me. They generate connections, passages, and tensions. Uniformly strung with a modest density, they cover and uncover space. The installation lives, moves and breaths with the architecture. Influenced by the most common of elements, it adapts and holds its weight while fulfilling its purpose. Viewers can see this, if they give it the time. And then, it dies.I became an installation artist when I conquered my fear of the unsustainable.
Nonetheless, de-install is the hardest part of my work. Killing your own creation is not easy. Typically, I do this alone, sometimes with close friends or family. I mourn. Taking down a work of art is numbing at first. I usually try and prolong the first stages of the murder by taking as many photographs as I can manage. Then I tell myself there will be a next time (hopefully) and I will create anew. At the first snip of the scissors, the tension leaves the work. Slowly, with each clip the work deflates and I feel guilty, but through its death comes incitement, a different kind of aesthetic is revealed. Few have seen my pieces fall, but I believe there is something rich in the way my installations heroically pass.
I've documented this part of my process and share it with you now:
The life of Revealed Space: Midland (shown at The Esther Prangley Rice Gallery in Westminster, Maryland. January, 2011.)
The Death of Revealed Space: Midland
I encourage you to join the conversation with my work by leaving comments below.
Mindy,
ReplyDeleteI love the photographs you've taken to capture the "death" of the piece. I can only imagine what it is like to take down such unique installations after pouring heart, soul, and hours into them. Hopefully, it will get easier with time.