Dropping off three long scrolls after 9 long months of work is ironically like that birth thing. Blood sweat tears, the whole thing, literally. Even groaning. I’m anxious. I’m at a precipice. The threshold. The liminal space. The work itself is that way. A relinquishing of control, a giving over to, a threshold from unseen, unobserved to seen, judged evaluated. Misunderstood or grasped and identified.
One of my big “wants” by communicating through symbols, is to shape meaning, to be understood. Laying these giant scrolls on the floor like bodies with resuscitation instructions was an interesting aspect because the next time I would see the work would be a brand new experience for me. I had only seen parts of the work at a time and never 12 feet of it at a time on the scrolls.
It’s a miracle we pulled it off. The amount of time figuring out what you’d think was a simple idea was astrophysics 101. My friend musician, sailer and rope climber Barney Waterbury and I took a deep dive into R&D to figure out how to make it work for anybody. It took many days, and obviously glitches are in no short supply but wonderfully this feeds the story of the work.
The observer, the viewer takes over from the artist and the curator and everything is laid bare. The inner workings the duct tape and staples and rough canvas edges become an equal component to the work. What do you think worts and all? I believe this work is a success. Lets see what happens.
