site-specific works

This piece was submitted for consideration as a site-specific work on the grounds of the Southeast Wyoming Welcome Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Description of Proposed Installation

“The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his circumambient universe at a living moment.”

Architectural plans, renderings, and site plans created and provided by:

I submitted the piece below for the new Southeast Visitors Center, near Cheyenne, Wyoming. Piece was not accepted due to the limitations of the site, but I was invited to resubmit the work above as a finalist.

Description of Proposed Installation

The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his circumambient universe at a living moment.

                                    D. H. Lawrence

In March of 1808, John Colter entered Fort Raymond in South Central Montana. His imagery of the area we now know as Yellowstone and the Teton Basin was so fantastic that he was initially ridiculed for his descriptions of the area’s beauty and weirdly wonderful natural phenomenon. The geysers, mud pots, and the region’s abundant wildlife mythologized the Yellowstone Basin in the minds of the nineteenth century public. We now know that the myths are true, but the region’s wilderness and the state of Wyoming still maintain a “wild” mythical tug on people around the world.

            Much of the world today has been populated for thousands of years. Both natural and human history is covered in layers of the detritus of civilization. In Wyoming, the natural, human, and geologic history is still evident in the open spaces that surround the pockets of the population. Having left Wyoming to pursue my education in the East Coast, I realized that the “open space of history” in Wyoming is a unique gift that we need to protect.

            In much of the state, an individual can see for miles in all directions. At a single viewpoint, you can see many historical, geologic, and natural sites of interest. Most individuals do not realize the breadth of the region’s human and geologic history they see in each view. The project I am proposing places an emphasis on this quality of the land and the open space of Wyoming. The forms I will create will focus on and identify the historical, natural, and geologic “sites” visible from the Welcome Center. I will design and build large “tuning forks” that will invite the viewer to see through the gap in the fork to a single or multiple identified historical, natural, and or geologic “sites” visible from the Welcome Center. The forks will create site lines to each point of interest. The visible sites will be engraved on each fork, with some forks having many “sites” that are visible within the space of the gap in the “tuning fork”. The “tuning forks” will be constructed out of aluminum and painted black. Each fork will be 15’ tall with the bottom of the gap that creates the site line at eye level (5’). I am employing the “tuning fork” form for two reasons. The form represents the idea that the State of Wyoming is constantly balancing its duel role as one of our nation’s last truly “wild” places and its ability to produce energy for our growing population for years to come, Wyoming and its citizens must constantly stay in tune with the need to preserve the state’s natural resources while ethically and efficiently meeting the country’s growing energy demands. The form focuses the view of the individual while still emphasizing that the open space and the vistas are the impetus for the work. The artwork is the “tuning fork” form and the open space of Wyoming. The form will have an interdependent relationship with the land and the sites seen through each form. The piece cannot aesthetically and conceptually function without the land it is installed in. The forks are an aesthetic device that will create awareness in the viewer of what they are “seeing” without obstructing the landscape visible from the site of the Welcome Center.

            The impetus for the work was to create a piece that sits in the and not on the land. The landscape is intimately tied to the form. The landscape is not a stage for a work of art; it is intimately part of the work of art. The objective of the piece is to focus on the experience of the landscape and the human and natural history that has shaped Wyoming.