THE FINALISTS
THE PROPOSAL: "Pocket Landscape"
“Landscape shapes culture.” -Terry Tempest Williams
I began this project while doing an artist-in-residency in the mountains of Colorado. Having lived all my life in the central United States, I am accustomed to being surrounded by a flat, open expanse. The mountains, while undeniably beautiful, made me feel claustrophobic and trapped. In this travel sized viewing box that I call Portable Horizon, mirrors reflect the sky above and expand it downward, erasing anything in between. The characteristics of different landscapes merge into one view, as the Rocky Mountains meet a plains horizon. Still photographs are taken through the view finder, documenting the invented surroundings.
The landscapes that surround us have the power to effect the way we feel, and to shape the way we see the world. Sometimes we find ourselves longing for a landscape other than the one we are in: maybe it’s the place where we were raised, the place we have most felt at home, or the place we fantasize about visiting. Pocket Landscape is a smaller, simplified version of the viewfinder that provides the recipient with a portable version of that favorite landscape, made to fit in a pocket. Through the device, viewers see their actual surroundings in real time and real space, but with an overlay of the chosen landscape. Pocket Landscape creates an always shifting amalgamation of the place where we exist and where we wish to be.
To begin the project, each subscriber chooses one of four landscapes. I would work with The Present Group to determine the best way to communicate with subscribers. One example would be a card with return postage:
Choose the landscape you would most like to carry with you at any time:
[ ] Desert/plains
[ ] Ocean
[ ] Mountains
[ ] Forest
Pocket Landscapes are then made to order, and subscribers receive the landscape of the their choice.
This prototype of Pocket Landscape is made with etched plexiglass as a desert/plains landscape. Each Pocket Landscape is 1 1/4” x 1 1/2” x 2” to be conveniently travel-sized. They are made of smoothly sanded, varnished wood with dowels or splines for reinforcement.
Artist Statement
I turn my attention to places and objects from everyday life that are often unassuming and easily overlooked. From this baseline of common experience, I use subtle interventions to ordinary, often ubiquitous materials in order to unfold our awareness of our surroundings and destabilize familiar structures. Space, time, light, and language, as well as household dust and the pages of a newspaper all become the materials for this exploration.
Because of their subtlety, these pieces ask to be viewed with heightened perception, fusing our intellectual understanding of the work with a sensory experience. Everyday materials are lifted from their context, defamiliarizing the familiar.
