Aeriathrae

Artist’s statement:

Dust seeds, balloon seeds, samaras and pseudosamaras, are all formed with characteristics that catch the power of the wind.  Tiny embryos swirl around us as we walk down urban streets, blow past us on vagrant breezes as we drive through suburbia, or careen down the highway in our cars.  The air is full of potential life.  Some of these seeds such as dust seeds, are miniscule, not even a millimeter across.  Other seeds, such as the winged samaras or pseudosamaras, may be a few inches from tip to tip. Borne on puffs of wind, these colonizing strategies serve to carry their embryos far from the parent plant, sometimes several feet, sometimes many miles away.

The six discrete objects in the Aeriathrae installation are inspired by the various seed forms plants have developed through evolution to harness the colonizing power of the wind.  Each individual shape of the six three-dimensional objects has been determined by a particular wind-harnessing strategy.   These plant-developed  strategies will be re-deployed by the installation to catch HVAC convection air currents.  Each air capturing strategy will rotate its form on its axis at a different rate, magnifying the wind-borne rite of passage that each plant embryo embarks upon at the end of it’s species growing season.

The forms are envisioned as hanging below the skylight on the floor above the Dalton Gallery, coming into the gallery space through the balcony in Gallery B.  Directly below, on the floor, a smooth white/reflective platform 6 inches tall by 9 x 7 feet wide will have a continuous video loop of wind-blown clouds, echoing the skylight directly above.

Installation Description:

Each lightweight hollow form, roughly measuring 24”x36”, is currently being built out of laminated unryu paper, linen, and stainless steel spring wire, and is designed to be suspended from a heavy duty snap swivel hung on 1/8 diameter steel “airplane cables” varying from 10 feet to twenty feet in length.   The regular HVAC convection of air in a large building should serve to turn each form on its swivel, especially in a tall space such as Gallery B in the area of the skylight.

radix -icis f. Latin. [a root; the foot of a mountain]; in gen. [foundation , basis, origin]

The foundation of most life on the planet is derived from the sun’s energy.

The sun is the great engine, radiating energy throughout the cosmos, onto our planet. Plants absorbing that energy turn it into carbohydrates, sugars: food.
The macroscopic community interacts with the sun above ground, absorbing its energy through plant material. Plants, however, have a continuing and more complex story of associations.

Tiny organisms in the soil biomass interact intimately with plant roots. Hidden microscopic communities in soils absorb, recycle and otherwise interact with the macro organisms above-ground.

The installation ‘Radicis’ is a mirror of these subtle, hidden interactions.

Jessica Marshall E., Michael and I made 12,500 pounds of adobe bricks for the Urban Tumulus installation this past July. Earth, sand, straw, water. Each air-dried brick measures 5 inches by 10 inches by 16 inches, and weighs 50 pounds. I don’t know how heavy they were when they were wet and newly unmolded. We made 250 bricks. The weather was damnably hot, bright, and dry, the hottest week of the summer, with temperatures ranging from 98 to 103 degrees. Making adobe is brutal physical labor, each day we needed to make between 35 -45 bricks. At the end of each day we were trashed. All of us who were involved with the project have a deep appreciation for the labor that goes into building an adobe dwelling.

The reddish adobe bricks are made up of Metro Atlanta ’s red clay subsoil. The sanitary mulch was generated from Atlanta Metro yard waste. The Wild Grasses were collected from sidewalks in southwest Atlanta. Drought hardened red clay picked and shoveled and full of debris: broken glass, bits of tiles, broken pieces of rusty metal.

Out of the 12,500 pounds of brick we made, we only used 11,000 pounds of adobe to line the corridor of the Urban Tumulus. At six foot two inches tall, 10 inches wide and about 21 feet long, its not enough adobe to build a one room house. Three pillars, or buttresses, provide additional support in the back. It amazes me how heavy earth is, how Solid. Earth feels reassuring and secure under our feet. Some phrases reflect the reassuring aspect of our relationship to soil. We are “on solid ground.” We can be “well-grounded.” We have “grounds” for a belief, an opinion or theory. The smell of newly tilled soil is wholesome, even comforting. When earth is under foot, all is well.

The tumulus is not underfoot.

Behind the scenes as we build Urban Tumulus

A mutation of the word “incognito”, referring to the act of going unrecognized, with the latin plural suffix “ae”: the “unrecognized ones.”

The purpose of “Incognae” is to direct attention to the activity under the soil. When humans disturb soil by tilling and introducing chemical fertilizers and pesticides many of the beneficial microscopic organisms are depleted or eradicated. This hidden collective of organisms creates soil structures allowing plant and tree roots to penetrate the soil more easily, promoting stronger root systems, and healthier growth. Plants and trees that utilize mycorrhiza out compete those that do not. This “unrecognized” part of the ecosystem interacts with approximately 90% of the planet’s flora. Lowly, hidden microorganisms directly impact our food as well as the planet’s enormous biosphere.

The fungiforms in the Incognae installation at Freedom Park are in various stages of erupting from the earth, drawing attention to hidden activities occurring in the soil. Additionally, the mycorhizzal community will be reintroduced into the heavily terra formed park landscape by the establishment of a native plant community that is raised without chemical fertilizers or pesticides of any kind, ensuring the presence of a healthy mycorhizzae.

A mutation of the word “incognito”, referring to the act of going unrecognized, with the latin plural suffix “ae”: the “unrecognized ones.”

The purpose of “Incognae” is to direct attention to the activity under the soil. When humans disturb soil by tilling and introducing chemical fertilizers and pesticides many of the beneficial microscopic organisms are depleted or eradicated. This hidden collective of organisms creates soil structures allowing plant and tree roots to penetrate the soil more easily, promoting stronger root systems, and healthier growth. Plants and trees that utilize mycorrhiza out compete those that do not. This “unrecognized” part of the ecosystem interacts with approximately 90% of the planet’s flora. Lowly, hidden microorganisms directly impact our food as well as the planet’s enormous biosphere.

In the Kennesaw installation, sixteen forms measuring from 14 to 36 inches in length and from 6 to 24 inches in height, are in various stages of emerging from beneath the ground with the largest forms fully emerged.

The black wooden frame is filled with cryptogamic crust rescued from a future construction site in the area of the Boat Rock woodland in South Fulton County. The cryptogamic crust, being so tiny, and normally underfoot, is in daily reality something “hidden in plain view.” Two interactive devices – magnifying glasses – are placed on each side of the moss table to suggest and encourage close-up inspection of the flora. The normal relationship of the viewer to the moss is changed. No longer under foot, the moss and lichen are framed at counter level and underneath the viewer’s nose. The magnifying glasses not only encourage interaction with the cryptogams, they also emphasize the scale difference between human and flora – microscopic versus macroscopic.

The backroom full of sculpture is set up to create a dialog between viewer and objects. At fifteen inches wide, the portal which is the only access to the sculpture, is too narrow to make a comfortable doorway. The partial view available from the slot hints at some sort of activity or a quality of space much different from the quietly lit room with the frame of moss. What person in a darkened room won’t go to a door, partially open and brightly lit from behind? When the viewer advances through the narrow slot, she/he is confronted with glaring white forms hanging overhead, to each side, and coming from below. The viewer becomes suspended in the middle of the installation, floating in relation to the sculptures. The viewer is now under the artwork’s “nose.” The intent is to create a role reversal – microbiotic become macrobiotic, and the human viewer becomes diminutive.

When my artwork is the size of an adult torso, it asserts it’s presence and feels menacing. Relating to these implicitly sexual forms on a small scale becomes an intimate experience, literally requiring a close look by the viewer. Between the unreal monochromism of the white forms and their small scale, the sexual content has become non- threatening.

The very sexual Venus of Willendorf is small, 4 3/8 inches tall, about the right size to hold in your hand.