Artwork by English teacher Ana Silva, Visual Arts teacher Josh Dorman and Head of the Visual Arts Department Laura McCallum is on display at an outdoor art installation at The Century House Historical Society at the Snyder Estate in Rosendale, NY.

[To see a gallery of photos, click here.]

 

The exhibit, “Eotechnic Sensorium,” curated by Jeffrey Benjamin, runs from June 25 to September 16, 2017. The term eotechnic refers to the technological advances from around 1000 to 1750—inventions involving glass, wood, paper, wind and water power.

 

Silva’s piece is called Lines in the Woods. The poems presented on white cloth are responses to the love of her husband, Dorman; to “world worry;” and to the history of the Snyder Estate, including its cement, nuclear shelters and local mushrooms.

 

Dorman’s piece, A While in Two Worlds, is a series of painted rocks of different sizes alongside a deep cold spring, nearby Silva’s art.

 

McCallum’s artwork is titled Tears. Heating borosilicate glass to 2200 degrees, she created 250 tear-shaped glass pieces that were fastened to tree branches that grow parallel over water. Her installation addresses “the range of emotions that give rise to tears,” she said.

 

Silva: My materials, reflecting thoughts of the eotechnic, are located somewhere between the hand-wrought and the more automated, rushed, engulfing technologies: the muslin and stamps, associated with the handmade but themselves manufactured, the hand-formed “Rosendale” Natural Cement, which now ships from Connecticut, and the weather-resistant (but not completely weatherproof) ink.

Dorman: I approached the theme very loosely. All of my work is about creating a sense of timelessness—or more specifically, creating a confusion of time. Since I use antique collage elements in my paintings, the diagrams, maps and outdated imagery is literally from this eotechnic period and speaks of knowledge that’s no longer accurate or relevant. The site, with its abandoned mines and crumbled kilns and walls makes one feel the change in time and technology, and I hope my imagery elicits a similar response. 

McCallum:  Curator Jeffrey Benjamin asked us to loosely engage with the term “eotechnic,” coined by Louis Mumford, or to “simply draw inspiration from the locale.” My art relates first to the site. In thinking about eotechnic, I focused on the site’s testament to technological transition. The location is a once-active cement factory returning to nature in the most beautiful way. In the end, forces of nature prevail. My work is about the primal power of tears that transcends all technology.

Silva: I visited and revisited the site as many times as I could over the winter and the spring to get a sense of my chosen spot. By early summer, the site had changed even more, and many of my items were placed differently because of how the underbrush had filled in. For instance, I realized that for more visibility, it was better to place the smaller cloth poems up on a slope. Fortuitously, I found two trees that were close enough together to create a sense of a hanging canvas for one of my poems that related to painting. I made my final measurements for cutting and sewing only at the end so I was able to cut that piece exactly to size. Similarly, the rounded shape of another cloth poem was determined by how a “draft” of that poem looked hanging from the intended branch. Going back to the site several times was essential to determining not only the placement, but also the actual shape of the objects.

Dorman: As a painter, I’m deeply committed to the flat rectangle, so this show presented a huge challenge. For my site, I chose a deep cold spring surrounded by a rock cliff, foliage and mud banks. After several false starts, I decided to paint and collage in bold saturated colors onto local rocks and boulders. I created 100 rocks (as well as a 3-foot-wide plastic boulder) in my studio. With the help of Ana’s excellent 3-D compositional sense, I then arranged them around the banks. Some rocks are submerged in the water, some partially buried in the mud and other stand upright. 

McCallum: Whenever I do an installation or a work of art that is intended to be outdoors, the first issue is selecting the site. It’s best NOT to pick the most dramatic and beautiful location. It is hard to compete with the beauty of nature. By carefully selecting the site for an installation, the work is half done. What I must do is make the art to be effective in the site. That can be hard. In this case, I knew Tears had to be installed over water to have water a key element of the work. When I first visited the location, on a snowy day in early March, I knew in a flash when seeing limbs of a tree growing parallel to the water. The site was perfect.

 

The issue was installing the glass tears that make up the piece. This is the most complex installation I have ever attempted. The pond is shallow, but bottom is soft mud nearly five feet deep. I could not stand in the water to install it. I had to fashion an outrigger comprised of a canoe and a kayak strapped together with 2x4s and plywood. It was amazingly stable, though the wind at times blew me away from or into the hanging tears. I also had to hang each tear so it would not hit others. It took five days to install. And that was an extraordinary experience. The rest of the world disappeared except for the sounds of songbirds and a waterfall.

Silva: I expect the ink to fade, the muslin to stain brown, green, maybe pink with dirt, leaves, and mold. The ground poems might be entirely covered over with dried leaves, twigs and soil. Perhaps the hanging pieces will rip after windstorms. The baskets of word pillows I stamp, sew, and offer to visitors will most likely be empty. I'm also curious to see what happens unexpectedly. For instance, someone, instead of taking away their word pillows, made a mini-poem on the ground with 2 of the pillows: "natural crumble." I thought this was wonderful, and left it.

Dorman: Sadly, a few rocks were stolen on the first days, but I’m counting on the better nature of most visitors. I expect that some rocks will shift or fall into the water. Others may become obscured by vegetation. Also, the colors of the pool changes noticeably with shifts in weather and light. I plan to revisit the site a few times to adjust things. 

McCallum: Being made of glass, this work is unalterable unless broken or melted. The installation has already survived a severe thunderstorm and deluge. Its prototype was outdoors for weeks in Brooklyn with no changes. There are a couple of individual tears that fell into the water and sunk during installation. They will be at the bottom of the pond forever, long after the work is de-installed and the exhibition forgotten. Some future archaeologist may unearth those individual tears and wonder what they are about.

Silva: Josh and I chose our spots together, and they are opposite one another. We had a general idea of what we would do from the start and knew that our cloth/stone ideas would complement one another. One thing I noticed later is how nicely it works out that my piece is black, white and grey and fairly simple, while Josh’s piece is full of every color and a richness of shapes. People have told us that our space, collectively, is very contemplative. That was a goal for both of us, so we were happy to hear that. Other pieces in the show are made of wood, glass, ceramic, metal, etc. The variety of materials is intriguing and keeps you looking and curious as you walk around the grounds.

Dorman: Indeed, it was a poetic and aesthetic bonus to have my site adjacent to Ana’s. Her more spare vision is a perfect complement to my maximalist explosion of color. As one walks the grounds, many of the sculptures reveal themselves as a surprise—a hidden treasure. Laura’s installation particularly works in this way. It harmonizes perfectly with the landscape and changes when viewed from different angles. Now that I think of it, in this show of 22 artists, the three Spence artists most keenly took advantage of water, reflection and shadows. This makes the three installations a different experience each time you see them. 

McCallum: This is a great question, but one best answered by the curator and not the artists involved. The work in the exhibition is spread over acres of beautiful land—most pieces are not in sight of others. Jeff encouraged that (dispersion), so I suspect he wanted each piece to be viewed individually and not in relation to the other work to see how each of us worked the location.

 

An outdoor sculpture exhibition has quite different viewing issues than an indoor exhibition in a gallery or museum where one work abuts another. What is most crucial in an outdoor exhibit is the placement of the piece in the landscape: does the work fit in, does the landscape enhance the work and does the work enhance the landscape?