What is the sense of place? Through the hand-pulled
print and the photograph, I examine the intersection between the individual and
nature in the experience of particular places.
Social, cultural, and historical trajectories sometimes collide at these
moments of the encounter. My work
explores the complexity of lived experience, in terms of immediate
materialities, the nature of perception, and apparent absences. By various
means and through multiple approaches, my work investigates the act of
experiencing place from different points of view. Each image thus expresses an
element of experience. I create productive
tensions between orientation and disorientation, frozen moments and duration, original
and copy, image and text, in order to re-imagine and find meaning in my
relationship to the world. The muttivalent character of my creative
explorations shows a complex negotiation between idea, materials, historic
fact, perceptual nuance, and mediated image. These encounters convey an
existential uncertainly about my place in the world. Finding place is in a sense, then, about
finding myself. Nature, culture, and self are all part of the experience of
place. This is where I unfold the meaning of presence.
The Event of the Red Cup
I begin with Kendaia, a historic place in
upstate New York. My home is just a twenty minute drive away. I am here to
visit the site of an old Iroquois village ravaged by Generals Sullivan and
Clinton in the late 1700s, during the era when colonists were expanding their
power and control over areas of the Northeast.
I initially drive past the site without seeing the NYS marker nor the stone
monument that are there. The presence of
a picnic table, no littering signs, and two markers indicating State Park
property verify that this is the place I am seeking. For material evidence of the Iroquois who
once lived here, there is nothing. I
know that the Iroquois sided with the British during the Revolutionary
War. I know of the Sullivan/Clinton
Trail that follows the eastern shore of Seneca Lake, snaking past my house on
Route 414, where another NYS marker is placed acknowledging the Iroquois site
Con-Daw-Haw. The Kendaia monument mentions the hostile Indian nations whom the
commemorated Generals were sent to abolish. A map of the region shows the trail
of scorched earth established by the orders of President Washington. I am not
convinced that the monument's commemoration tells the whole story. I wander
around the perimeter of the mowed lawn of the site, alone with the entanglements
of tree, detritus, stream, wild raspberry and grapevine, blue sky, fresh air. A flicker of red appears--a red cup. It is somehow not surprising, maddingly
unfortunate yes, and certainly out of place.
The no litter signs should have been adequate to remind visitors of
their responsibilities.
But then something else about the red cup halted my
wandering. The uniqueness of the moment where the red cup, me, the absent
Iroquois, trees, blue sky, picnic table, and state park converge in this place.
I needed to understand how this is to be; what were the reasons for both the absence
of material history and the presence of a red cup to appear in this paradoxical
fashion, demanded my attention.
Questions about place as an eventmental site for the production of
meaning became clear. Historic memory,
perceptual experience, and the mediated image become the focus of my work. The red cup is both the end and the beginning
of the journey.
