The reverence projects are based on natural materials that appear seasonally within the local landscape. Typically overlooked species of plants, commonly known as weeds, or otherwise useless, undesirable or unproductive. These materials are selectively harvested, categorized, and then modified using various methods, often tedious, and rooted the realm of craft and botanical sciences. They are approached from a sculptural perspective that investigates approximation, material history, notions of gratitude, and natural lifecycles within broader history of landscape art.

Tall grasses flow across the hills that border the Appalachian mountain range of the east coast, as well as across a not so insignificant portion of the plant. They are a common part of the landscape of the blue ridge and piedmont regions of Virginia. Often “bush-hogged” semi-annually for the coming years planting. These fields rotate across the horizon and become the backdrop to the passing cars on the highway; some of which gaze out in wonder at the moment when they all burst with the fullness of purple and green hues illuminated by the rising and the setting of the sun.

Project Duration | 30 Days + Post Production & Exhibition | 30.08.2008 - 29.10.2008

INPUT

Primary Physical Materials

• festuca arundinacea, artifical sinew.

Theoretical Keywords and Conceptual Foundations

• Landscape Theory, Agricultural Time, Annual Cycles, Balance, Awareness, and the development of material history and identity via the art object.

SYSTEM | AKA. APPARATUS

Materials

• festuca arundinacea, artifical sinew.

Method

• Selectively harvest, subdivide, categorize and prepare common grass shoots. Use those segments to construct a sculptural “approximation” form and surface that will over time decay; destined for a return the ground from which it originated.

OUTPUT

Sculptural Object | Exhibited @ Mayer Fine Art Gallery, Va. 2008

Photography & Print | Documentation

2008 | Mayer Fine Art, Newport News, Va.