CARVE ME FREE OF THIS WILDERNESS A Project Presented to

CARVE ME FREE OF THIS WILDERNESS
_______________
A Project
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University
_______________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Fine Arts
in
Art
_______________
by
Ronald Paul Moya
Spring 2013
iii
Copyright © 2013
by
Ronald Paul Moya
All Rights Reserved
iv
DEDICATION
In loving memory to my father, Manuel Gastelo Moya who’s storytelling’s were the
old Indian trick of holding a smooth stone in the palm of your hand, distracting one from
their troubles allowing time for the soul to heal.
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ABSTRACT OF THE PROJECT
Carve Me Free of This Wilderness
by
Ronald Paul Moya
Master of Fine Arts in Art
San Diego State University, 2013
Carve Me Free of This Wilderness is a collection of experiments, video
documentations and sculptural objects relating to themes about nature and landscape. My
work is a record of my recent journey of personal explorations that has resulted in a profound
shift from traditional modes of expression, drawing and painting, to more ephemeral methods
such as “action digging,” unauthorized excavations in highly contested open spaces, which
results in memory displacement/replacement, spontaneous social encounters and incidents,
and “action sculptures.”
Transformation of a space is representative of the dig works. The digging is generated
by a personal reaction to a space or place, with the action of digging as a vocalization
through excavation toward the state and condition of the site upon its discovery. The
transformation phase is acts that can be interpreted as integrated theater and performance,
earthworks and social interactions that are instigated through soil displacement and video
documentation.
Modification is a site-specific action of large earthen structures in a space. The
earthen structures are large rectangular walls constructed of earth and residual materials
excavated from the dig site. Each structure incorporates a negative space window that acts as
a framing device in a natural setting.
Reevaluation, using mud, seed, and plant materials, views landscape as simulacra.
Materials from the dig site are used to fashion models that mimic the landscape in San Diego
County by using materials from specific locales in the county and shaping these models by
means of wind and water erosion. The resultant effect is a sculpting of the model’s contours
and the creation of a terrain in microcosm.
This body of work is representative of a continuing and broad evolution of discovery
that is fueled by a need to self-educate and expand my understanding of my place within the
grander scope of space.
The body of work that composes Carve Me Free of This Wilderness was displayed in
the Jackson Gee Gallery at San Diego State University from November 30 to December 6,
2012. Images of this thesis project are on file at the Slide Library of the School of Art,
Design, and Art History at San Diego State University.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................................................v
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................ vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... viii
CHAPTER
1
INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 2
THE DIG DISCOVERED ...........................................................................................16 3
BEYOND THE DIG ....................................................................................................30 4
INFLUENCES .............................................................................................................36 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................41 vii
LIST OF FIGURES
PAGE
Figure 1. Free Range made of beef products, oil paint, found rag, plastic olive spears
and wood. .......................................................................................................................8 Figure 2. Beast, sticks, tar, burlap, oil paint, local grasses, rope, manure, concrete
block. ............................................................................................................................10 Figure 3. Fence structure made from scattered branches found and tamped into a
trench with mud. ..........................................................................................................13 Figure 4. Far west side of the Fence showing the corral that holds a wooden altar
made of mud, manure mud masks and buffalo horns. .................................................15 Figure 5. Chollas Lake open space. .........................................................................................17 Figure 6. Evidence of the site’s “other” occupants.. ................................................................20 Figure 7.Two inhabitants leaving as I was arriving to work....................................................22 Figure 8. Paul is still a regular to the site.. ...............................................................................23 Figure 9. The Dig, looking north, at the early stages of the west berm, which would
eventually become a thirteen-foot wall, and the north wall, which would move
further north by eight feet ............................................................................................25 Figure 10. Rendering, from my daily journal, of an early non-verbal dialogue. .....................27 Figure 11. Center section of The Dig.. .....................................................................................32 Figure 12. View of western wall that runs along the west face south to north.. ......................32 Figure 13. Bob Verschueren, Wind Paintings, 1980. ..............................................................38 Figure 14. Bruni / Babarit. The Stream Path: Clothing the Banks for the
Confrontation and Cohabitation of the Commonbed, 1988.........................................39 Figure 15. Salmon River. Idaho. 24x24 inches, 2000. .............................................................40 viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My dearest thanks and love to my wife, Katherine, whom without her support and
patience I may have never attempted this enterprise. To my son, Nicholis, whose kernel of a
suggestion sparked a course of action that finds its sum within these pages.
Special thanks to my committee members Richard Keely, Eva Struble and Greg
Durbin for their guidance, inspiration and insight throughout the creation of this project; and
in remembrance of Richard Baker whose keen insights, humor and strong opinion have left a
lasting and indelible impression upon me.
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The account of this project, beginning approximately in November 2010 and
concluding December 2012, is an explanation of a series of transitional experiences
manifesting themselves in a collection of creative experiments exploring ideas of land use,
physical space and the psychological ties of place. As I describe this process in the singular,
it is constructed of transitional phases. Each phase has been transformative in the overall
creation of my work and is driven by a commonality tied to a specific geographical location
that has shaped the trajectory of all my actions.
The site lies in an urban open space located within the East San Diego city limits and
adjacent to a city park and recreational lake. The western section of the park, which is fenced
off from the park proper and under limited supervision from park officials, has become an
informal multiple-use space for the neighboring residents. This relationships bound to this
space are historical and tied to much emotion and sentiment. The space is an unspoken
inheritance, and the stories of the area are as diverse as the neighborhood. Those stories and
the evolution of the space have changed as the neighborhood has changed since its
development in 1949, military housing hugging the perimeter fence of what was originally
the first and largest naval radio transmitting facility, built in 1921. In that time, the facility
went through a number of transitions from naval supply depot to fueling station to a city
water filtration plant. The west side of the park still retains mementos of its former self:
dilapidated foundations of loading docks and warehouses dot the landscape, visible through
chaparral and sun daisies and scattered about the serpentine asphalt that betrays the hustle
and bustle of an earlier time. I have been acquainted with this area for a number of years
using the site as many residents do for a respite from the street. The space would be the focus
of my work for nearly two years. In that time I found an unconventional method of
expression through the act of scarifying a chosen section of ground. Acting upon this space
by scarring natural surfaces of the ground had loose origins in graffiti, where a writer prints
or paints his message or sign on a public surface. The act is usually performed incognito to
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avoid confrontation with law enforcement. Graffiti is a common feature of most urban areas
and is usually associated with gangs, youth and the socio-economically disenfranchised. In
the neighborhood where I live, I have interpreted it to mean a variety of things, from
territorial markers by area gangs to amateur free-form art pieces, or even solo and crew tag
names. Sometimes it is just vandalism, blurring the line between appreciation as art
democratized and the tastelessness of garish self-promotion.
Though I did not initially start the project with the intention of making a definitive
association between environmental scarification and graffiti, it gradually found its way into
the dialogue via a natural and organic process. So when I found myself digging, it was with a
measure of hesitation, for I was not sure what I was doing or why. I found my voice in the
simple act of doing and thereby found the reason for my actions. Even with a shovel tightly
gripped in my hands, digging, as a vehicle toward discovery, is a mysterious and
incomprehensible act. Peering down into a hole two feet by five feet, sweating through hours
of dense clay with pick and shovel, was literally a descent to discovery, and what I sought
needed to be uncovered a spade full at a time. Generally speaking, the creative journey is the
making of one’s own myth. There is always a critical moment in the journey where a door of
perception will open up, where the air quivers and disrupts the stillness, awakening the
recipient (Huxley, 1963). For a brief instant, in the excitement of a new discovery, the creator
is stripped of the claustrophobic clutter of the world, and what is necessary and valuable is
revealed.
I have always had the ability to manipulate mark-making tools. Crayons, chalk and a
Ticonderoga No. 2 aided my interior world. I saw drawing as a rather commonplace skill
endowing everyone. I saw making imagery as a natural aspect of human nature. I arrived at
this assumption early as a child. In our home there were no books on shelves or painted
pictures hanging from the wall. Culture arrived as a black and white TV, isolated in a barren
corner of the living room, resting on a metallic brass stand. This is neither a rebuke of my
parents nor an attempt to tug at the strings of sympathy; it is simply a fact. I lived as the
majority of the world does, cloaked in the comfort of unmolested upholstered day-to-day
existence. Two things remained constant: the necessity of illustrating my imaginings, and the
satisfaction of closure that came from acting out what I created. The physicality brought
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whatever initiated the idea full circle, capping what can be described as psycho-immersed
theater.
If there was any introduction to art-making, it came in the form of my father, a
telephone, and a blue-lined legal pad 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches. My father, a ship builder,
would sit at his chair, his arm resting on a small end table, with a yellow legal pad and a
sharpened Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil, speaking into the telephone. He would conduct
shipyard business all the while his hand and pencil orchestrated an auto-mechanical
prestidigitation that filled the page with curious penciled figures and shapes, none of which
had anything to do with boats. As soon as the phone call ended, he would set down the
pencil, and the miracle would cease as abruptly as it began. This phenomenon would not
present itself again until the next call. In my eyes, my father was elevated to the realm of
magic. Each time the phone rang, like a Pavlovian dog, I would feel my heart race to witness
the miracle of the yellow sheets populated with contorted figures and square-headed treats.
Trips to Yosemite, Meteor Crater National Park, the Petrified Forest or Hood Canal in
a cramped, bleached, blue aluminum trailer were the memories I have of places visited on
vacations with my father as guide. On these trips, he would shed his middle-class dressings
and transform himself into the classic wilderness Indian scout. (There was a time my brothers
and I believed we were direct descendants of Geronimo.) He would busy the air with nervous
chatter, like a mountain man falling upon company for the first time in years. He would
manufacture any excuse to pull off the main road, with prospects, just around the next bend,
of gold ore veins and buried Indian ruins. The cabin pressure from his stories was so
immense I could scarcely breathe-I would burst from the vehicle and, with a geologist pick in
hand, dig in with a frenzy to churn the soil for buried treasure. Sometimes they would stop
the car just to pacify my anxiety and allow me to dig. It is a condition that I have not been
entirely cured of.
My father and I would take day trips to the back country of San Diego. On one
occasion, we drove out to Pine Valley. This is before the suburban sprawl pushed eastward,
transforming quaint country villages into upper-income hideaways and gated territories of
showcase homes. My dad as always passed the hour drive with speculations about the
historical spot he had in mind. I always found it strange that he seemed to know so much
about the unwritten history of San Diego; since he was born and raised in Globe Arizona, but
4
I never gave it much thought and guessed it had something to do with his “native” blood. He
pulled off the main highway and drove us up a dirt road that connected a few modest homes
tucked away within the oak groves. We pulled onto the shoulder next to an open field of wild
grass where, nestled in an outcropping of rocks, a lone oak stood. My father began his
imaginings. He told me how the tree was an old meeting or council rock where the chief of
the tribe resided. He painted such a picture that I could see the small band of people going
about busying themselves with seed gathering, chatting amongst themselves, working next to
open campfires, mashing acorns in stone metates.
We walked over to the tree, and my father began digging. I found a place and began
my excavations. It was solitary work. He stuck to his spot, hunched over on his knees,
puncturing the soil with his pick .We dug for an entire day. At the end of the day we had
extracted pottery shards made of red clay, some with delicate design patterns made by a
brush or reed, pieces of pottery large enough to show the curvature of the whole pot, or a
pierced hole where maybe a rope acted as a handle. In the late afternoon we drove home in
silence, each buried in his private thoughts. I looked at my father very differently after that
day, and I realized I was hooked. Dirt held new meaning.
Since then, my life as an adult has taken a rather circuitous route. I have held many
jobs, some I believed to be callings, others dictated by circumstance. At one time I had been
between jobs for about six months and was preparing to “hit the pavement” once again. My
son and I were driving to a dentist appointment when he turned and commented that I should
think about becoming a teacher. He believed artists essentially spent their time sharing ideas
with one another, and teaching to his way of thinking was a logical extension. I had never
considered the idea of teaching, because I was very comfortable playing the role of the
working studio artist. The environment was unusually flexible, and my co-workers possessed
a wide range of talents and sensibilities. However, his words had struck a chord, and I was
ripe to the suggestion. Ultimately, I returned to school, did the necessary work, and in the
process discovered that an inner need was satiated. The act of teaching spoke to my desire to
directly affect the world I lived in. I was able to work for an inner-city high school in a
neighborhood where I had spent my adolescent years. It was a career that had a component of
civic duty built in. I felt I was at the frontline of society-building with my finger on the pulse,
able to effect real change. I have been shaped and transformed by this career, building upon a
5
credo that one must make a difference with the tools available. Having the opportunity to
teach what I love, art, is an extended bonus. Before teaching, all my activities had been selfserving. I acted in response to, not out of. Everything since has reshaped my actions. I have
become an educator in thought and deed.
To understand the motive for spending a year digging in the dirt and concentrating a
considerable amount of time and energy in the earth in lieu of making objects took a
considerable amount of energy. It came as an epiphany, where a bolt from the separated
heavens had appeared and struck me with the idea that digging was a justifiable course of
action. Of course, I knew that I had my work cut out for me, because I was not completely
convinced that the idea of cutting into the earth was a legitimate art-making activity.
I came to graduate school equipped with paintbrushes, canvas and paint, filling,
dabbing and smearing on rectangular surfaces. Over time I felt a frustration in the paint and
the limitations of the flat surface. It was a cognitive boundary which I could not overcome,
inhibiting my ability to resolve this creative conundrum. I felt like a domesticated animal that
had come face to face with the limits of its enclosure. At the time, this aching defied
definition and so there was no remedy to my pain.
In the past when I experienced the tinge of dissatisfaction, I always resorted to
building things: small three-dimensional environments, very similar to theater sets. These
were boxy creations with walls, floors and a roof. Sometimes I added windows for multiple
viewing angles. Toys, found objects, street trash, and chance materials were candidates for
use. Store-bought or created elements were disdained simply for that reason. Things that
possessed a real or imagined history were essential to the overall composition, even more so
than formal aesthetic considerations. I understood Roland Barthes to say that static objects
are closely associated to the “cult of death”. Static images, he felt, are segregated from the
“community of life” and present themselves as a slide or a frozen specimen, mimicking
gestures of speech, incapable of recapturing the animated moment, merely locating a point in
time through isolated substitutes in the absence of living truth (Barthes, 1980).
I attempted to capture a sense of the real in this contained space called a canvas. I
ached to make the static image lift up from the frozen moment and experience the living
world. I wanted my surfaces to breath, live and die. Along this route the heavens parted, so to
speak, and the night became day. Late one night, at the end of a painting session, tired, alone
6
in the studio, I went about the mindless work of cleaning up, putting caps on paint tubes,
sealing bottles of linseed and stand oil, dipping my brushes in solvent and wiping,
performing the chores that had become a set of practiced movements I have done mindlessly
for a number of years. If viewed anthropologically, they were nothing more than a series of
reflexive actions, like a mountain ape peeling bamboo leaves from its stock.
The revelation that would alter the course of my work manifested itself in the form of
a water faucet. Strange how signs present themselves and take on the guise of the most
mundane: it is an open heart which distinguishes the helpful message from the white noise of
the mechanical world. These signs, opportunities or messages do not come like the morning
paper, slapping wet-hard on the front door. They are made up of the world, porous and
pliable, invisible and wistful.
I stood at the basin, a bar of soap in my left hand gently massaging the brushes,
watching the soapy water swirl down the drain. I was struck by the iridescence of the colors
caused by the separation of oil and water, a bubbly whirlpool of suds and solvent swirling in
the drain. In this late-night stupor I imagined the water flowing down the plumbing,
meandering throughout the building’s apartments, tumbling through the main drainage to the
ravine that spilled into the river basin below. I became acutely aware of my blindness, a
defiler of the planet. How many more like me were there mindlessly washing our crimes out
to sea. I felt the grip of guilt. It was a slight transgression, possibly, but in my eyes, a crime
just the same. An acute sensation of guilt and shame acted on the conscience. The stains on
the basin told me I was not alone, that others shared the same deed, but it did not dilute the
feeling of personal guilt. I had become absolutely awake, an aching alertness that was
irrevocable. Change was at hand.
For weeks I wrestled with this apparently minor but personally troubling event. It
plagued me enough that I attempted to articulate it to several people. It was a confession that
is always met with uneasy embarrassment for both parties, especially when the problem or
curiosity posed floats slightly free of gravity and is inclined toward the mystical. It is odd
that the connection between the mystical and art should be such a sensitive subject, since
they have both shared such a long relationship. The possibilities or inventions independent of
the circuit board and the right angle may still be useful for discovery what drives the “whys”
7
of what we do. Regardless, it became apparent that, firstly, I would have to solve this
problem on my own and, secondly, I needed a plan.
The first attempts to reconcile the issue manifested themselves in works that relied on
found objects incorporating unconventional materials retrieved from nurseries, Home Depot,
Wal-Mart, the street and dumpsters. Dumpster-diving and walk-searching for anything
visually intriguing or possessing a sense of discarded history became my main preoccupation
in my searches. It was a method I was very comfortable with, in that I had spent a number of
years creating from the detritus of everyday existence. The objects constructed, the initial
response to the “drain incident,” were small-scale works that spoke to box-works made years
earlier. These were small enclosed houses staged with an assortment of discarded items and
arranged compositionally to connote a narrative. The new objects, on the other hand, were
sans the confines of the walls and ceilings of the older works, but each was set in the format
of a stage. Thematically, I had begun to drift toward motifs within the realm of nature,
specifically: the inter-species power relationships of domination and subservience.
I used the bovine as my representative for the exploration of this theme. The cow has
had along historical relationship with man, from service beast to food product. Meat became
my choice of material. At the time, I was using animal by-products as a source to wean
myself away from using standard art materials (see Figure 1). At the same time, I was
attempting to manage my environmental footprint. In the beginning, pet supplies, chew
bones, rawhide, soup bones, and animal treats became the bulk of the media used. I
rationalized that, by substituting synthetically manufactured materials for animal byproducts, I was in fact not supporting industries that practiced natural resource extraction and
thereby added to manufacturing and consumer-based waste. The irony was that the materials
I chose supported industries that practiced many of the same environmental violations,
besides raising the moral question of producing suffering for profit. At the time, I was
reading Susan Sontag’s (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. Reading further, I found that,
in my haste to find a substitute for making, the route taken had led to a philosophical cul-desac. It was the summation of Sontag’s thesis - considering and including non-human
suffering and pain and according non-humans the same rights against unwarranted pain and
suffering as humankind-that acted as a moral compass and consequently become a thorn in
my side. The question concerning my problem would be, could I reconcile the conflict
8
Figure 1. Free Range made of beef products, oil
paint, found rag, plastic olive spears and wood.
between of new material versus perpetuating pain, and would I choose to care enough to
change?
I would continue for some time to use hides and processed animal flesh, wrestling
with my conflict, and rationalizing that the end product would either degrade after some time
or could conceivably be eaten and thus leave a smaller percentage of residual waste than
would synthetic material. Still, I had to contend with the biting immorality of using what was
created through suffering for the production of art. I had to maintain that, in an attempt to
rethink a traditional method of making, I had to search for new approaches and materials.
Balancing this need to move away from the synthetic and to find humanity in my work were
complex arguments surrounding the issues between human and non-human needs. I had to
accept as part of the process the frailty and the contradiction embedded within in this path of
discovery.
The wrapping of flesh, the discovery of the adhesive quality of animal residue, was
symbolically loaded and difficult to resist as useful but unexpected qualities of the materials.
I argued for these materials as a natural response; the flesh held a deeper significance,
permitting a justification in the face of Sontag’s book. I confess I had arrived at a point where
I did not want to consider the grocery list of my materials, and I avoided reading labels, as I
only wished to make with the goods. Denial became an unanticipated tool. The internal
contradiction revealed a war raging within is as old as Descartes and as current as Derrida.
The biblical declaration of man’s supremacy guarantees to him mastery of all creation; the
9
question is whether we if we can move beyond our embedded specie-ism regard non-human
interests as well. This became my inherited argument.
As a result, I completed a series of objects that toyed with the fragile proximity of
human and non-human nature. The pieces each addressed the comingling of both existences
by a combination of synthetic materials, found objects, petroleum products, raw wood and
animal material (see Figure 2). This was an avenue I left myself as I broadened my search for
a purer method of making. Adhesives tentatively held together slabs of hardened mud which
earlier had been laid out at a remote site, baited with food in hopes of capturing scavenging
footprints. It was the first excursion into making larger free-standing sculptural pieces that
experimented with sculpture embedded in natural surfaces. Each piece was constructed on
site, exposed to many environmental and climatic conditions. In one experiment I laid out a
burlap-supported slab of moistened mud near a cluster of squirrels. These animals were
accustomed to human contact, and many in the group were assertive. Watching the animals
react, especially with people they recognized, was interesting. The animals anticipated the
bags of bread before they were presented. A few squirrels’ heads popped up from their
hillside dens broadcasting the “squirrel-alert” calling the rest of the pack to gather. It is an
unsettling experience to be in such close proximity and in such disproportionate numbers,
where matters of civility come to the fore. I did find the meetings intriguing enough that I
wanted to capture the moment. I did not want to discuss so much the interaction between the
human and the non-human as I did the physicality of the moment. I was not interested in
documenting the event through photography or video. What interested me were the marks
left on the ground that traced the excitement and chaos. I felt if I could anticipate another
such meeting and devise a way to place some structure that might mediate the two groups at
the time of a feeding, then I just might capture the living trace of a dialogue between man
and beast.
The plan was to make wet mud panels that, when laid flat on the ground, would
inconspicuously blend with the environment. Each panel, two feet by three feet, was made
with a light-weave burlap used as a cold-weather blanket for new-growth plants bought from
a local hardware store. The burlap backing was doused with a mixture of water and glue until
it hardened. Once hardened, the burlap was stiff enough to be frosted with a white glue and
mud mix and brought to a thickness of two inches. The last layer was added just prior to
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Figure 2. Beast, sticks, tar, burlap, oil paint, local
grasses, rope, manure, concrete block.
laying the panel in place. This was a trial-and-error process. Initially, I layered the panel at
home and drove it to the site, but the top layer would always dry out, due either to travel time
or weather conditions. I eventually had to prepare the panels at the site and in place.
The experiments would take place over a period of a couple of weeks. The squirrels
were not always cooperative or present, and so staging an interaction was a hit or miss affair.
To complicate matters, my actions were looked on suspiciously by the park rangers and
visitors. When approached, I would reassure everyone of my good intentions, explaining the
purpose and the desired outcome as a standard procedure. My entry into the mix, squirrel
versus human, was regarded as an intrusion by some people and a curiosity by most. It was a
foreshadowing of the problems that would color future projects. When working a regulated
public environment, I had to appreciate everyone’s concept of nature. I refer to Joseph
Beuys’s action piece Coyote, I Like America and America Likes Me of 1974 in making an
observation. Whereas I identify my pieces as physical experiments, Beuys’s action pieces are
social experiments. In his written analysis, Beuys claims to have staged a most unusual if not
unlikely encounter with a coyote, as he says, representing the trauma in America’s past by
the character of this wild animal. Beuys becomes a psychic medium who makes himself
present in the form of a coyote, and speaks “with the Indian, the Red Man-only then can the
trauma be lifted” (Beuys, 1990). Beuys’s staged encounter is unlikely in a natural setting.
Beuys, wrapped in felt and armed only with a walking stick and floppy hat, “communicates”
with the creature, sleeping on the “coyote’s straw”. Each assumes their respective territory
11
within the caged area, allowing time and curiosity to furnish each one moments of closer
inspection. Though in totality Beuys is reaching out to and through the spirit of the coyote, he
is still speaking at the animal. The coyote, the non-human element, is still regarded as a tool
in an exercise with human ends. The idea that nature can be understood is a completely
anthropocentric stance. The zoo mentality is predominant throughout the exercise, and the
non-human, as evidenced in the supporting photos, must accept certain states of distress
within its gated confines. The artificial premise, in which it finds itself, with this insistent
creature (Beuys) in a felt rug and floppy hat and cane and concerned about the psychic
transference, can never be measured so as to bring the coyote or the human any closer to
understanding. The relationship between man, animal/nature and metaphor is a construction
that is unfortunately one-sided. Walt Whitman addresses the question and supplies an
answer to Beuys in his poem “Leaves of Grass”:
Swiftly arose and spread around me
The peace and knowledge that pass
All the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is
The promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is
The brother of my own,
And that all men ever born are
Also brothers and the women
My sisters and lovers,
And that a keelson of the creation is
Love,
And the limitless are the leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells
Beneath them,
And the mossy scabs of the worm fence,
Heap’d stones, elder mullein and poke-weed.
A child said “What is the grass?”
Fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do
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Not know what it is anymore than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my
Disposition, out of hopeful green
Stuff woven,
Or I guess it is the handkerchief
Of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrance
Designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in
The corners, that we may see and remark, and say whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
Vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform
Hieroglyphic,
And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff
I give them the same, I
Receive them the same. (Whitman, 1855)
Whitman tackles with questions piercing deep what Beuys addresses with physicality
in his action piece: nature as the wellspring of those answers deeply ensconced in the human
psyche. Whitman muses that this desire to dialogue with nature is as much a part of our
nature, and so remote as to defy understanding. We know little of the nature of nature and
gather no more answers than a child’s wonderment over a blade of grass. It is Whitman’s
surrender to the immensity of the question that I believed informs all the actions I would later
pursue and find, the “comfortable disposition,” as Whitman spoke, “The peace and
knowledge that pass / all the argument of the earth.”
Weeks later I would move west from the park proper and venture to the western
terminus of the park. This part of the park is less tended, and the uses of this section are more
varied and less restricted. Park officials occasionally ride through this section emptying trash
cans, but that is the extent of management. The uses of the western section are as diverse as
the people that populate the area, from dog-walkers and joggers to gangbangers and
13
transients. At this site I constructed another experiment that used scattered elements, natural
found objects, the broken branches of the eucalyptus groves that dot the area. A fence was
constructed from scattered branches, extending east to west across a heavily trafficked
walking path (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Fence structure made from scattered branches
found and tamped into a trench with mud. The object
ran a line of thirty feet east to west and connects a corral
with a placed sculpture, seen on the left, with two access
openings along the trail.
This excerpt from my diary of February 2010:
This photo is part of a series of gates and fences that I am constructing from fallen
branches. My intention is to alter the terrain but consider those that will inevitably
encounter them. My considerations do not stop at human interaction, but
considers the natural inhabitants as well. Only chance encounters, as with my
"beast "the object has now become the habitat of several squirrels and field mice,
and assist me with data as to types of interactions with the “planted” objects and
the mysterious "other”, human or non-human. I am able to distinguish the
different hands responsible when a piece is tampered with.
A ditch was dug the length of the fence line: the excavated dirt was gathered and
moistened, and the branches were set in the soil and allowed to dry in place. In making this
exposed piece, I began to play with the notion of temporality in the work. It became
immediately apparent that the piece would inherit a limited life span. It would inevitably
succumb to the elements-wind, rain, temperature, exposure and human interference-usually
displayed in the deconstruction of an object. As I dabbled in these temporal exercises, I
14
began to understand that the inclusion of others had become part of the process. What ensued
was a series of engagements with forces outside the scope of the work-stakeholders, human
and non-human-in the open space. I observed on several occasions the interaction of varying
forms. The jogger, whom I imagined had run down the hill every day for a number of years,
on one particular day found himself freakishly manipulated through a downhill slalom of
gates, hitting each opening with athletic deftness and turning back as he passed through to
study the curious structure he had so unconsciously obeyed.
Attached to the fence was a corral that housed a high-legged sculptural shelf
encrusted with mud masks, weeds and a pair water buffalo horns partly concealed in a small
stand of eucalyptus saplings (see Figure 4). From a distance I watched people approach,
investigate and interact with the piece. People examined it, walked its perimeter and added or
reshaped the corral and fence line. Other times the fence would be completely disassembled,
bicycle tracks evident through the whole of the fence. I would reassemble the fence and make
an additional length, returning later to see what modifications had occurred to the piece. I
recognized that I was a player in an unintended performance. I had become an instigator of a
series of creative actions. I positioned works to foster what I believed to be a working
dialogue, and the piece acted as a mediator between the audience and me. In addition to the
fence and the corral, chunks of concrete were used as markers, with crude figures drawn
pointing in the direction of other experiments. At the time of the fence-corral, there were two
other exercises taking place. One was a tar, twig and burlap quadruped (see Figure 2) and a
mural on the foundation of a former warehouse. The “markers” were painted and
strategically placed, pointing to each experiment. With painted concrete blocks, my audience
was managed through a designed path which assumed the role of unauthorized park markers
possessing a rather primitive and peculiar nature.
15
Figure 4. Far west side of the Fence showing
the corral that holds a wooden altar made of
mud, manure mud masks and buffalo horns.
16
CHAPTER 2
THE DIG DISCOVERED
I stumbled by chance into what would later be referred to as The Dig. The Dig lay at
the extreme west end of the park’s boundary, butted up against the backyards of the adjoining
neighborhood and the city’s southwestern property line along a major thoroughfare.
Untended as the area is, it possesses a certain beauty that allowed me to surrender to the
rustling of the wind through the leaves and the dappling of sunlight. Nestled in a clump of
old pepper trees, found by walking directly west from the fence project and southwest from
the mural works, The Dig occupied a shallow knoll that ran south by north to a gentle slope.
In this stand of trees are dense clumps of succulents and wild lilacs (see Figure 5). From
March to April the entire area explodes overgrown with sun daisies. It has the happy
appearance of a serene parkland hideaway. But upon entering the site, I find this serenity
comes to an abrupt end. This facile trapping of visual sentimentality, birds chirping, the
darting of rabbits and squirrels, can lull one into a visual myopia. The result of unabated
human contact has left significant wear on every aspect of the site and reveals the stresses the
entire area has endured over the years. The daily tamping down of vegetation, dumping of
trash, and spray-painted vandalizing on all surfaces leaves one stunned in disbelief that those
responsible can possibly be unaware of their actions.
I had come there to hide from the sun, and the foundation’s piers were inviting. The
privacy created by the brush made for a restful spot. I imagined having a lunch in here,
bringing my family and taking in this oasis-within-an-oasis. It is this allure of concealment
that made this spot such an attractive destination. Other areas, used by others groups, are
treated equally appallingly, but these spots did not have the same sense of enclosure. The Dig
site was different because the wall-like thickness of the vegetation accentuated the
separateness. It made this spot a choice piece of real estate, valuable enough to stake claim
by marking it with paint.
It was on my second visit that my reaction was altered and would eventually develop
into what I felt as a forcing of my hand and a coloring of my response to this narrow strip of
land. On subsequent visits I started taking in the whole space. The more I visited, the less
17
Figure 5. Chollas Lake open space. The Dig, looking north in
its early state (center), shows two piers with a concrete
parking stop used as a bench. Graffiti can be seen on all
surfaces, as well as trees. Heavy traffic at the site left the
area denuded of vegetation. On the left is evidence of the
beginnings of shallow trenches around the piers.
apathetic my eye became. The mask of the place fell away, and I saw it for what it was. I
want to say that my eyes were objectively taking in the entire area, but truly there was
welling up of a subconscious rancor in the blinding light of day. What I witnessed was
discouraging. The area as a whole was no longer the lush vegetal garden seen moments ago,
but was revealed as a beaten patchwork of trails, burned out swatches of land, a carpet of
broken beer-bottle-coated pathways and scribbled concrete slabs, bludgeoned cacti, spraypainted tree trunks and destroyed animal habitats. On one such afternoon, I walked the short
distance home from the site, and realized I was suffering from a pathological blindness. The
streets mirrored the site: pavement littered with trash, walls splotched with gray paint
buffing, benches, sign posts and storefront walls cluttered with graffiti tagging-a sad
counterpoint. I was witnessing shared environments suffering a similar neglect. It was the
return of nature’s gaze, a haunting furtherance echoed in the words of Jean Francois
Lyotard’s prescriptive judgment of the serious artist in postmodern society, as paraphrased
by Steve Baker (2000) in The Postmodern Animal “Any responsible contemporary artist’s
priorities should be a disposition which consistently values the unknown over the known, the
difficult over the easy, the inventive over the rule-bound and creative living over
18
compliance.” This was the challenge of the ubiquitous gaze of nature, coercing me into
action by the shame of knowing, lending from gnarled limbs a coarse wipe for the cataracts
that shielded what I was now obliged to accept. Indignation would be the impetus for, and
shock the propellant toward, social action in the service of making. However it would be
slow propulsion. Like a zombie, I would find myself performing a series of actions that had
no discernible end. It would be an evolutionary process for both body and soul, and a
transformation of both site and the maker.
Before I recognized it as a potential creative endeavor, The Dig’s earliest
manifestation was driven by civic duty. I saw the site to be in need of some advocacy. A
sense of conscience driven by what I defined as an injustice fueled my responses toward
social action. This was supported by the reading I was doing at the time. At the time of The
Dig’s discovery, I had just begun reading Derrida’s (2008) The Animal That Therefore I Am,
Joseph Beuys’s (1990) Joseph Beuys in America: Energy Plan for America and Susan
Sontag’s (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. Derrida’s proposition that nature is not simply
a forum for the human gaze as object or landscape, but may, in fact, be returning its own
evaluative glance. The fact that cross-species communication cannot be empirically
confirmed does not discount the possibility that other species can form opinion using other
processes outside the realm of human understanding. Derrida argues against Descartes’
animal as biological automaton. I felt myself compelled while reading accounts of Joseph
Beuys performing works defined as a series of “actions” with a social underpinning, where
the act was the connective tissue that held the body of work in place. Susan Sontag’s painful
illustration plagued my consciousness with the realization of the muted violence I perpetuate
by the sheer act of awakening each morning. All their words infected me, demanding I
confront the site for more than a plot of ground (Baker, 2000). I was drawn to the site with a
single-minded purpose, though I could not clarify what it all meant. I knew that this place in
the middle of an overgrown pepper grove in an open space surrounded on all sides by
concrete and asphalt was the staging area for a plan undrawn. I had but to answer one
question: if this space could speak for itself, what would it ask of me?
This early February 2011 excerpt from my journals of projects performed in the
Chollas Lake open space speaks of my first impression upon the discovery of The Dig site;
19
There is an unsettling conflict between old and new that this project produces,
which is more action than the act is of. It is always about language, but to use
language to identify itself? To document, the act of securing evidence, seem
contrary. The mark-making, digging is a form of talking. To talk about the
talking, is a breach of privacy. This act of communicating is a very submerged
thing. The last thing I would want is to run the risk of becoming chatty.
Disruption.
I sway between guilt and jubilation. I have entered this area that has been claimed
and remained relatively "untouched" and have made my mark upon it. It is
graffiti. To those that stumble across it, it must be inexplicable. It defies
convention. It grates the rules of the graffiti writer/artist. The mark/hole is
deliberate, but with no apparent end than to scar the ground. This goes against all
the rules of engagement. As a tagger/graf writer it is about the mark, but the mark
is a self-proclamation, quickly scrawled in secrecy. My pronouncement is a
defiant act. It proclaims, "I am here and I am here for the duration!" It is beyond a
challenge; it is a declaration. It is as if nature itself has risen with pickax in hand
against an insult and declared war.
On February 26, 2011, I write in my journal:
Stage 1: prep area. Clean and remove glass and material;
Stage 2: sweep away surfaces, clear all residual dirt build up,
Stage 3: gray out tagging by rubbing with mud;
Stage 4: begin initial dig marking, shovel out 4 inch by 4 inch trenches around
each pier.
I try to imagine the workings of nature. Is it possible to replicate the patient
transformative processes of the hand of nature? I will not be building like the hurried
construction of street renewal or housing construction. This will be a subtractive process of
erosive etching and carving designed by time. The mimicry of this natural mystery must
insist on the absence of the maker’s hand. Consequently, I assume the guise of invisibility as
method. Only the effect can be witnessed, not the cause.
Critical to insuring my invisibility was negotiating the territory and the schedules of
the entire park. I reconnoitered the area on a regular basis, choosing late afternoon, 3:00 to
5:00, weekend mornings and late afternoon to scout traffic, park routines and the ebb and
flow of park visitor habits. I knew that the evenings were not feasible work hours, but it
became a practice to recon evidence in and around the park by examining the refuse left
behind by those who used the park when it was closed. The littered remains of beer bottles,
condoms, and needles betrayed a much broader vision of the park’s happenings and a quite
20
different dynamic sharing the space during those late hours between the park’s closure and
reopening (see Figure 6). Reading the park graffiti on walls and broken foundations and
comparing tags allowed me to determine with a fair degree of certainty a who’s who tag
crews and of the “oners” (taggers that work independent of any tagging crew) in the general
neighborhood and the frequency and placement of graffiti within the park. All this was
established in the concealment of the bush.
Figure 6. Evidence of the site’s “other” occupants. I gave
fictitious identities to those that cohabited the site by the
types of items left behind and the regularity of their
appearance. There were the drug users, the winos, crack
junkies, midnight lovers and “bangers”.
Spontaneity, the freeness of the open, release from the confines of the four walls of
the studio, was liberating. I began to realize the unrestrained possibilities that existed as the
open space became a blank canvas. In my imagination the space had the appeal of untainted
territory, and, as it did for Fredrick Law Olmstead gazing over the landscape that would later
become Central Park, the illusion of the open excited the senses. However, in those early
encounters, I had not worked out the implementation of a plan on the area. Once the
commitment of occupying the area was resolved, the second step was how to proceed. I
admit that initiating the act of ground-breaking was the most difficult step. In the beginning I
would arrive and do nothing more than scratch the ground or mark about the piers with the
soles of my shoes, as if I were scuffing the ground for a clue. My initial actions betrayed a
21
tendency toward timidity. I knew that I was not alone, and that, by altering this area, I might
provoke consequences. Though I was not certain of the reaction to the idea of digging,
previous experiences taught me that the potential for a negative reaction was real. This filled
me with a sense of dread, because I knew that not to act was also an available choice.
Matthew B. Crawford, in Shop Class as Soulcraft articulated, what I could only internally
sense:
It is characteristic of the spirited man that he takes an expansive view of the boundary
of his own stuff- he tends to act as though any material things he uses are in some sense
properly his, while he is using them- and when he finds himself in public spaces that seem
contrived to break the connection between his will and his environment, as though he had no
hands, this brings out a certain hostility in him” (Crawford, 2009).
By physically moving objects (the physical manifestations of my psyche rumblings)
and willfully tampering with them, I initiated a dialogue with the space. The infusion of
experiments and sculptures endowed me with a sort of priority stewardship over the entire
sweep of the land. I had symbolically planted the banner into the soil and laid claim to the
entire western end of the park, and annulled all former claims
As grandiose as the claim was, and egocentric in its rationalization, at its heart was
buried, frenzied and zealous, an idealism driven by a vision of a better day. The realization
surfaced that the act of making had the ability to effect real change, and it was through direct
action, whether landscaping, mural-making or altering through digging, that the art object
could be psychically active. “The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators” (Crawford,
2009). One’s sense of responsibility must extend beyond, and as Crawford ventures, the self
must include a bigger picture of the world as “an object of passionate concern” (Crawford,
2009). The physical act-the picking up of the shovel, driving it into the soil, witnessing the
shifts in elevations-was an essential act. I could not have conceived of this as purely
conceptual or intellectual in nature; after all was said and done; I was going to have to get
“dirty.” The physical act is tied much closer to history building: as I wrote in my journal, “I
sometimes think of my work as memory work.” There were many times when someone
would walk into the site while I was there photographing or writing in my journal, and the
excavation would provoke a conversation, stirring a memory. There was one instance where
a man walking his dog told me how this place held a specific memory of his wife. He said
22
this was the place they came to hold hands. He didn’t understand the digging, but I reassured
him that the memory of that time remained alive regardless of the changing topography. With
each passing day, each hour poured into a trench or in the building of a mound, I was
excavating a past memory and creating new ones.
However, it was the dynamic of the site, its perceived concealment and false privacy,
which put into question my early solitary musings. It became apparent that the site was the
hub of far greater traffic than I had anticipated. I imagined that I was working in a solitary
environment. This was a residual effect of working within a studio environment: one
becomes accustomed to the silence of work. On good days when the arm and back are strong
and the vision clear, I would forget I was in the open. As time elapsed and my stay became
more pronounced, other signs-a broken stick driven into a mound, rifle targets tacked to the
trees-indicated that it was a place under multiple overlapping occupations and voices. It so
happened that we were all specters passing one another daily, and only the discarded traces
of our beings were left behind for each and everyone to decipher (see Figure 7).
Figure 7.Two inhabitants leaving as I was arriving to
work.
As my visits became more frequent, it was inevitable that I would run into some of
the park’s other inhabitants. Paul became my camp confidant. Throughout the development
of the project, he would make it a point to visit when I was working. Initially, I was
uncomfortable with the relationship, since secrecy was my only ally. Like me, he had lived in
the area most of his life, only he along with his older brother; we had all kind of grown up
23
with the open space. As he once noted, his personal history was tied to this area, and many of
his memories were closely associated with these pepper trees. He spoke of his first love and
how they met here and carried on their romances, and now presently it is his living room
since losing his apartment. I thought of my father and how he imbued an open space with life
by his stories; in many ways Paul’s recollections of this place made me take pause and
consider the conditions of my work, making allowances for others (see Figure 8).
Figure 8. Paul is still a regular to the site. He and I
became close associates, as he was the only person who
knew my identity. I spent many humorous hours
listening to stories of the area from his perspective.
The site work is the locus for conditions that I have not before experienced in the
process of art-making. The intervention of living encounters added to the working condition
as elements that, in addition to the natural elements-weather, available light, seasonal
changes-were now dictating the experiences of the exploration and development of the
project. This was an entirely different method than I was commonly accustomed to while
working in a conventional setting of the undeterred linearity of research, development and
analysis. The digging had positioned itself between the maker and the audience as mediator,
and had become a real participant through which we all negotiated.
This new partnership would continually change the complexion of my approach. In
conventional art-making processes, the piece is always acted upon. Dictates are made on the
surface through various agents, and those choices are made by one hand and one mind. The
Dig diverged from that sort of character with the addition of unexpected variables: those
24
being elements of time, chance and natural decay. These external interventions infiltrated the
working process further altering creative choices. The conditions of anonymity had been
altered now that I was interacting with people: I was becoming known not only by sight but
by name. Also, there was the condition of an individual or individuals that were shadowing
my progress and contributing to it a type of communal critique in the form of an additive and
subtractive process. The external commentary usually came in the form of deconstruction;
however, there were times when additions were made through props that I would decipher as
signifiers. Returning to work might bring with it a sense of anticipation, because the
probability of redesign was high and the state of the site unknown. Whatever long-term
strategic trajectories I may have had planned, they were always disrupted. My original
intentions would have to be reconsidered as an almost daily occurrence, adding fluidity to the
work. What I was experiencing was the early symptoms of the dissolution of straight line
thinking. Unseen forces sent out distress flares to my mind and spirit against my assault, in
opposition to my digging. To these forces, my digging was seen as an attack on the
continuity of the space, of “their” accumulated histories, evidenced by their inscribing of all
exposed surfaces. I viewed our interaction as an illustration of a compounded communal
disorder, both mine and theirs, deviating from what is perceived as a normal behavior. The
dig merely brought to the surface what is taken for granted, that this space is not unoccupied,
and that how it is cared for will elicit a response. As a by-product of the changing work
conditions at the site, my attitude toward the work and the site changed to include those
acting in concert upon the site. This was a gradual transformation from an all-consuming
hostility driven by personal activism and vigilantism, if I must describe it so, to an
acceptance and appreciation of my role and the role of those unknown participants as we
proceeded along a shared path moving slowly together toward a new world, in what John
Grande described as, “a conception of the space, or place that a people or culture live within
and informs cultural identity” (Grande, 2004). My radical redistribution of the space was
awakening hibernating realities about the ownership of this space (see Figure 9; Tuan, 1977).
As the temperament of the project progressed, humor elbowed its way into the equation. The
overbearing seriousness and underpinnings of conflict gave way to the joke. The theater or
performance in the site could not be avoided. The collective in which the site existed
infected the entirety of the project, affecting all that entered upon the stage.
25
Figure 9. The Dig, looking north, at the early stages of the west berm, which would
eventually become a thirteen-foot wall, and the north wall, which would move further
north by eight feet
This transition and transformation in the making of The Dig would inform and reform
my interactions, both my physical production and my psychological approach. The humor I
speak of was muted and displays itself in a purely physical form. An example of the comedic
dialogue-in contrast to more destructive acts such as knocking over piers or scraping off
embedded sculptural elements-was the plethora of playful abstract signage that took the form
of scrawling in the dirt on a dug section or targets placed strategically throughout the site.
Sometimes it spurred others to a creative act, such as a quote written on an exposed root. In
late March of 2011, I began an extensive dig from the north side of the site with the intention
of connecting a wall to a northwest mound I was building. The walls and mounds were made
from the dirt excavated from the trench work, digging down and away from the base,
creating a four-to-five-foot wide foundation, piling dirt into support framing, and using an
eight-by-eight-inch tamping tool; this was the first real effort to create a substantial structure.
I had been reading Bernard Rudofsky’s (1977) Prodigious Builders and was using it as a
field guide, adapting some of the techniques illustrated in the book for site construction. I had
intended to seal access from the north-side passage limiting the unrestricted traffic that was
26
impacting the conditions of vegetation and wildlife. I thought that, by limiting access to
existing access points and suggesting to visitors a more suitable optional entrance from the
south side of the site, I might reduce the overall negative impact on flora and fauna, and the
site might begin to experience, in time ,a measure of repair. In Figure 9, in the foreground
looking north can be seen two piers bracketing the beginnings of a wall limiting access from
the north. On the opposite side of the wall is a trench of a depth equal, to height of the dirt
and found materials of broken concrete, yucca, and branches; the depth of the trench and
height of the packed dirt created the impression a wall. On the left side of the photograph can
be seen the beginnings of a mound with an eight-foot connecting trench running parallel to
the northern mound. This was labor-intensive work, with the initial foundational building
taking two days and the movement of nearly a half ton of dirt, lifting a shovelful at time. As
each trench became deeper, the act of throwing the dirt up and over my shoulder and finding
the correct trajectory became a developed skill.
On one particular day I arrived to find my wall collapsed. All of the internal
materials- yucca, concrete, and branches-along with the majority of the wall, had been
pushed into the north side trench. The illustration (see Figure 10) is looking south toward the
main pepper tree. What was of particular notice was a stick rammed into the remnants of the
collapsed wall. It was an ancient statement, like the ones my father used to point out on trails,
stacked rocks meaning this or that, or “Go this way.” This inconsequential stick jutting out
from a pile of dirt was as crystalline in purpose as a roadside construction sign. Suzi Gablik
comments on this sort of nomenclature in modern art, indicating that it is symptomatic of the
“dominator” trait that makes statements in an aggressive fashion under the guise of personal
freedom of expression and the unspoken right of the artist outside the parameters of public
scrutiny (Gablik, 1991). The stick represented an exclamation point to my actions. This was
symbolism that could not be ignored. Again I was face to face with another unintended
element that crept its way into the project and compelled me to take notice. Without the
destruction of the wall, I might have interpreted the stick as an acknowledgement of a more
compatible spirit. Gablik states that the real roles of the artist, especially those working in the
public arena, are as guides. Gablik argues that modern art had unfortunately imbued the artist
with the notion of his supremacy, where the ego and personal vision supersede the concept of
27
Figure 10. Rendering, from my daily journal, of an early
non-verbal dialogue. The northeast wall had been torn
down, and, upon my return, in the debris, a stick was
planted. Was it a warning or a comment on the work, I will
never know.
shared ownership in the public space and cooperative access in a free society. As she says,
“Our attitudes are not yet tuned to participation in social integration” (Gablik, 1991).
In its physical form, The Dig represented a series of transformative shifts brought
about by the interaction of many parties and supported by influences from my widening
research and readings. In its earliest stages, my activities at the site were limited to “digging
out”, as a means of limiting access by those perceived as detrimental to the site. Most
everything at the site was interpreted through the perceived condition of the site as first
discovered. Reaction to the appearances of the site was judged from a standpoint of personal
interpretation, acting as a voice from and for the site. This moral position was spawned by
civic duty and a belief that all citizens within culture have a responsibility to respond to any
and all unfavorable conditions and to attempt a corrective measure. This core conviction
would hold true from the onset of the digging and carry over to much later works; I held
firmly to the belief that the artist’s duties cannot be separated from living reality, and that the
artist’s concern must have a collective influence, however small or great in scope. This
transference of attitude from “art for art’s sake” to the promotion of civic change was
influenced earlier on by the readings of Joseph Beuys, but was intensified after reading
Garret Hardin’s (1993) Living within Limits. By taking the principal location of my creative
expression out into the open and away from the safety net of the studio, I had unintentionally
28
entered an argument in a highly contested arena called the commons. The commons are
understood as any facets of the earth’s condition that are accessible for use by all and are
beyond privatization or personal ownership. These rights may extend to public access,
atmosphere, freedom of movement and the right to bear as many offspring as one chooses,
and extend beyond just property rights, though it is in the land that many of the conditions of
dispute arise. However, as part of this intrinsic contract with these freedoms, we also share
the consequences of abuses invited by self-interest. That danger inherent in the inevitable
self-interest, the collective responsibility for the shared negative impacts, is at the crux of an
argument that compels us to redefine what freedom means. It is a concept, in Hardin’s
opinion, as a culture, that possibly needs redefining. Whatever conditions of personal benefit
and its impacts there are-whether they be the demand for more fuel or the desire for more
affordable cars, and the resultant negative impacts like the diminished quality of air-a byproduct of self-interest was in microcosm unfolding at The Dig. My personal interpretation of
this tract of land was as a public commons serving many interests. Within the scope of the
park are limited resources, which are available to all and managed by an informal collective
spirit, both human and non-human. However, the condition of the area is a direct effect of
several causes. Firstly, the park, though under the administration of the City of San Diego, is
only casually maintained. This condition has been ongoing for a significant time, and the
open space has been relegated as a sort of wilderness. This would not be an altogether bad
idea if the park were not so accessible, making it susceptible to continual damage. The area
houses a very diverse ecosystem. There was a time when coyote pups could be heard and
ring-tailed hawks and their nests seen; in the spring, the park’s one of the few areas in San
Diego where the blooming of wild daises is remarkable sight. It is unfortunate that this area
has been mismanaged and continues to be abused, with no discernible vision for what it
could be for future generations.
It was my evaluation of the overall area that eventually politicized my project.
Following Suzi Gablik’s argument, I saw the artist’s obligation moving from a posture of a
singular agent, to one who might act as a collective arbitrator serving the community through
art, finding alternatives to old habits and helping citizens to educate one another in the
process. I saw this as an opportunity to put into place those mechanisms I use as an educator.
Ideas are shared and expressed in an effort to find direction. The Dig’s transformative
29
qualities challenged me to exercise methods that are used in education and inevitably lend
themselves to play to attract the interests of the subject. As teachers, we often bounce ideas
and strategies off one another seeking methods and novel ideas to entice students to learn.
Classrooms filled with teenagers are petri dishes caked with volatility. The experiment, in the
guise of a lesson, is adjusted by the clever teacher, depending on the composition of the
class. Every class is different with its unique personality. The Dig engaged many of the
characteristics of education, and I found myself regarding this site as an open air classroom
where I instructed, in a non-verbal manner, through the actions of a shovel.
I took the attitude of the instructor to the site. It was my estimation, and purely based
on conjecture due to the evidence I witnessed, that the treatment of the area was in such a
deteriorated state because, for so many, the site had stopped existing as a living organism. It
was disregarded because it had become a static element that had no relationship to the
community it shared space with. The Dig provided me the vehicle to reveal the presence of
the natural world. Change employed through alteration stimulated interest that, in the timespan in which I worked the site, environmental improvement became the norm. Unsightly
littering and open-pit fire had ceased to be common occurrences.
30
CHAPTER 3
BEYOND THE DIG
The cessation of the dig was a complicated affair. A evolution, the challenge of
working with new media, the many directions employed in its construction, all clouded the
thought of a conclusive end to the project. The making had become an all-consuming affair.
In some respects The Dig had become an obsession. One year after The Dig, I am still drawn
to the site. I find myself strolling over to the site with the intent of inspecting it present
condition. I find myself planning the resumption of activities or applying an alteration that
has been nagging me from the pages of my journal. In essence, I am looking for an excuse to
engage once again. Though I have officially concluded the project, internally I have not
found closure.
In terms of method and process, Bernard Rudofsky’s and David Bourdon’s books
were the most instrumental in aiding me through the entire process. Bourdon’s (1995)
Designing the Earth: The human impulse to shape nature and Rudofsky’s (1977), Prodigious
Builders became my user guides, culling the history of building with raw materials. From
those resources I was able to mix contemporary technologies with historical methods of
construction.
During the early stages of The Dig, I resorted to much improvisation and trial and
error. Had I not run across these two authors, I would likely have continued my course of
actions with marginal results. Because all trial applications were done on the spot, I was
subjected to an occasional earthen collapse due to my inexperience and ignorance. In the
beginning my efforts were composed of piling up of dirt and found materials and relying on
gravity, balance, the weight of layer upon layer and sheer luck.
Though I did not vary much in the tools I used on The Dig and the subsequent
sculptural objects that followed, the experiences of working The Dig did aid in expanding my
toolbox. My standard tools were a round short–nosed shovel and a two-ended pick with a flat
and a point end. Other tools used were a 60-inch digging iron, a hand axe to cut thick roots or
shape and carve edges, a smaller version of my pick that allow me to work in cramped
31
spaces, along with a hand truck for transporting five-gallon buckets of dirt, sand, manure and
water to the site. These became my new art tools, trading in the art store for the hardware
store; as a friend remarked, “You traded in your brushes for the brush.” In addition to the
tools, I moved approximately five tons of dirt, using the bed of my half- ton truck as a gauge.
Materials dug became walls and foundations. Nothing went to waste, and each shovelful of
material found a place and a purpose.
A driving principal of the project was to be conscious of not only where and what I
was working on, but how I was working. I made a conscious effort to add nothing to the site
that was not already there and used what was available to aid in its construction. From the
moment I made the decision and gambled to move from painting on the canvas to working in
the open, I orchestrated all my actions to take into account the footprint of the “object” and
how, if at all possible, to minimize any long-term effect from my efforts. One such method I
employed was to wrap exposed roots with burlap and root tar. A wrap can be seen on a
section of exposed root in the photograph (see Figure 11). My intention never was to expose
the entire root system, but only a section of one root on the eastern-facing side of the dig.
Support for this root was always an objective, so the soil beneath it was left for structural
support. Three pepper trees exist on my own property, and I am keen to their stubborn
resiliency. It is a nearly impossible tree to kill. Along such an extensive root the remaining
roots, assured the sustainability and structural soundness of the tree.
Another consideration was how to incorporate discarded materials into the site. In
most instances I removed paper and plastic trash, since this had no building value. However,
some discarded trash was exploited as building material. In reading and viewing the
photographs in Rudofsky’s books, I was amazed at the ingenuity and adaptability of peoples
with limited resources. I decided that I too would take advantage of that mindset. Nothing
would go to waste, and even if it was not visibly obvious, I knew that sections of certain
mounds were ringed with 40-ounce beer bottles as retaining wall supports.
The conclusion of The Dig was as curious as its beginnings. As I worked on The Dig,
options to concluding the project or at least giving it a final act seemed to elude me. At one
point, I considered walling off the entire site (see Figure 12), more specifically, to create a
four to five foot rise and wall off on the west, east, north and south access areas. This
strategy would have essentially created a seven to eight foot wall around the entire
32
Figure 11. Center section of The Dig. This section is
bracketed on the right by a wall running northwest to
northeast, and on the left by the south entrance.
Protruding the base of the pepper tree (top) is the
exposed root system running east and south.
Figure 12. View of western wall that runs along the west
face south to north. A composite was made of various
techniques. Wall acted as a work bench where different
techniques could be employed.
circumference of The Dig. Walling off the area was part jest and part serious insurance for
the long term prosperity of the site. Creating the wall would in fact make the site, if not
inaccessible, at the least challenging to get inside. My rationale was motivated by the
prospect of a return of wildlife to the site. I had started to leave wild feed for non-human
inhabitants, creatures that had been noticeably absent from the area before. Before long,
33
rabbits, squirrels and a pair of juvenile hawks were visiting the area. There were times I felt
the euphoria evident in the writings of Thoreau and Whitman. I felt enriched by a closer
appreciation for the area, and I knew that in some small way I was responsible for this
through my actions. Whether this was unrealistic romanticism influenced by a sunny day and
the charming readings of a bygone age was of no consequence. The actions I took over the
course of a year were selfless in purpose, with the intent to apply a solution to what was
visibly the result of a one-sided recognition of what became a joint project. The Dig was an
attempt to shake the conditions of that apathy through an unconventional style of negotiation.
On the day The Dig officially ceased, I had gone to the site with the question of how
to end the project deep in my thoughts. I felt that this project had run a certain course and had
exceeded its need, but also felt that I should or must take some concrete physical measure
that would symbolize the end. I felt compelled to put a signature last stroke to the site to
signify its end. As was the case with creating The Dig, artistic control was wrestled from my
grip, and the conclusion came in the most unexpected manner. Looking back in hindsight, I
see that nature had formed a more logical conclusion.
I arrived at the site with an unusually positive attitude. As I stated earlier, I always
approached the site with some apprehension on what I might discover at the site and
excitement. The apprehension contained equally a mixed amount of dread due to the
uncertainty which was always a working component of the project.
I arrived after a few exploratory visits earlier in the week to assess damage control
and contemplate the possibilities of some additions I had drawn up in my journal. My earlier
excursions filled me with hope, since the site was relatively untouched. Walling off the east,
west and north ends had been the life breath of the project, relocating access to the site from
north to south. However, I was giving heavy consideration to completely walling off the
western and southern faces. This would have had the effect of hermeneutically sealing the
site from entry. I believed that this method would represent a physical statement, a sort of
moratorium. By sealing off the site, I imagined that this particular patch of earth, surrounded
and defenseless against uninhibited intrusion might have the opportunity to replenish and
heal itself. If it were accomplished, I imagined anyone visiting the site would immediately
recognize the condition of this site in contrast to that of the surrounding park. In order to
34
accomplish this feat I would have to deepen already existing trenches and quickly construct
thick walls such as the one that ran north to south on west-facing side.
Upon entering the site, I found that a few locals were already present. Paul, whom I
had met in the beginning stages of the project, was there, as well as Bill who sat alone on a
nearby slope, sipping beer. Bill used the area to drink his 40-ouncers after work. I had known
Bill only through the bottles he left behind (which I had buried as building material on many
occasions). We became acquainted when I made a point of noting the bottles as a sign of his
presence. Paul was always a more vocal presence. He was very curious of my doings
throughout, and conversations with him always had the flavor of debate. With Paul as a
sounding board, I was able to flesh out ideas or obtain greater clarity about those gray areas
of the process. After all, Paul represented my target audience, and it is rare that, in the act of
making, any artist has the privilege of real-time reaction.
Usually any destruction to the site and its forms was relegated to lose prevention. I
would factor in the amount of work I had allotted for the day and add to that the necessary
repairs. However, on this particular day, the destruction to the site was significant. My
reaction was significant as well. I was unable to contain my anger and frustration. It was
obvious that a determined effort had been applied to disassemble the walls. Walls four feet
high by four feet thick had been toppled. Certain depressions of The Dig had been filled in,
with the most curious result that hundred pound concrete piers, which I had decided months
earlier to eliminate from the project and had buried under two feet of dirt, had been unearthed
and thrown into the trenches. This alone was a tremendous feat of will and the most
perplexing of all the alterations. One had to search out the piers, dig them up and carry them
out, rolling the blocks seven to eight feet up a slight incline to finally dump them into a
trench. I read this as a counterpoint to my project. As intriguing as it is in hindsight, on that
day it was received as inflammatory.
Out of reflex I started shoveling and cleaning up. As I was working, Paul drifted in
and, in his usual excited manner, began an editorial about the happenings in the park after
dark. He explained of the appearance of a “great blue spot,” altars, satanic rites and staged
theater in the dark. As I worked he continued on in greater detail. This type of dialogue with
Paul was not uncommon, and I had grown used to his colorful stories that were a soothing
backdrop to my digging. As a rule, I never interacted in a one-on-one. There were many
35
instances where people would come upon me in The Dig, and in those instances, the
conversation were of an inquisitive nature. They supplied me with a supplemental history,
anecdotal and individual speculation about what was happening in the general area, and I
would take this information as valuable insights about the unusual forum I was working in.
The greater meaning of my work passed through these personal stories as the ephemeral
ingredients. The nature of the work became a repository of memories for others and for
myself. Regardless of the outcome of the project, it was apparent that the expansive nature of
the project was already stored as a new set of memories carved into the dirt. In that respect,
the site was a living organism, fluid and constantly supplying historical and mythological
information.
Listening to Paul’s story, I could not ascertain between fiction and reality, simply
because there was a good chance that my primary source provider was not entirely in the here
and now; but I listened just the same. What he told was a tale of hedonistic rites performed in
the night, staged performance at two sites that involved coffins, bondage and colorful
assemblages of ribbon, paint and tape. I doubted his story, but there was enough evidence to
support his fantastic telling. In contrast, my own actions were as inexplicable and peculiar as
any cultic rite performed in the shadows. These stories were not any in this case, more
outlandish - the story of a man who took it upon himself to dig a hole to save a park. Quite
possibly, my creative ego was open to the delicate bruising of a competing faction, or
possibly I sensed the inevitable, that the project had run its course. This new set of
circumstances had loosed a whirlwind of gossip with wild speculations that found The Dig an
unsuspecting participant. In addition to the tales of satanic rites and a report of a traveling
Internet-driven theater troupe working the park, stories surfaced of the adjoining area acting
as the site for a Mexican drug gang’s initiation, and videotaped sex orgies. However, the
most troubling story was that the city was seeking, with backhoe in tow, for the Pepper
Grove Digger. In the end, I was asked by a park visitor to stop, and, out of respect, I agreed.
In retrospect, this was the only plausible ending; The Dig was an accidental experiment that
transformed a place with a set of memories and experiences. In turn, the site had furnished
me with a new approach and avenue of exploration. I had literally walked into this place as
onto a blank slate, and walked away, not defeated, but wistfully satiated at what had been
accomplished. It had all the quality of a film noir’s hushed fade to black.
36
CHAPTER 4
INFLUENCES
In the early going of my research I found myself looking for some historical premise
to anchor myself to. My definitive departure from two-dimensional representations left me
on unfamiliar footing. I felt weightless between sculpture and some other thing I could not
quite put my finger on. Working in the open had closer connections to anthropology or
archaeology than art. Though I was familiar with the early seventies, Land Art Movement, I
knew from the onset that that I was not connected to this lineage. I felt a different aesthetic
brewing, which was related to the relationship man has with nature and how that is
expressed. It was this brooding struggle with my confinement within the four walls of my
studio that was driving me into the open. I felt distracted, and in that state I returned to the
place that always gave me clarity: the open space.
I came across John Grande’s (2004) book Art nature dialogues: Interviews with
environmental artists, a collection of interviews with environmental artists currently active in
the field. Their approaches are as varied as the lands in which they reside. This singular book
was the Rosetta Stone of my search. Between its covers, my ambitions were freed of the
doubt that had accompanied each pickax swing, giving direction and form to my course.
Each artist was chosen for specific qualities that related to my work at the site and to
all subsequent works I would develop after The Dig’s closure. Working in the open had had
such a deep influence on me that it was difficult to remove myself from working strictly in
natural spaces. All my energies went into finding approaches that brought the audience into
direct contact with what I understood as the mystery of the site. I had abandoned all
considerations that existed outside that possibility. These artists in Dialogues assisted me by
shedding light on the duality that was possible in my work. This lateral shift in thinking did
not come easy. I was married to The Dig. I had invested a great deal of time and effort, as
well as considerable emotional attachment; The Dig’s expansive nature was unlike anything I
had attempted before. To give oneself completely to a singular act was as unsettlingly as it
was illogical, and at times I felt as if I were chasing a phantom. These artists acted as a
37
sedative to the anxious state I had become accustomed to. To see the ease at which they
move from the outdoors to the four walls and back was as reassuring as it was illustrative. As
with Rudofsky’s (1977) Prodigious Builders, which was a manual guide to building in the
mud, John Grande’s (2004) Art Nature Dialogues became the reassuring guarantee that put
my mind at ease.
Bob Verschueren, a vegetal artist from Belgium, has been working with natural
materials since the early seventies. Verschueren’s use of natural materials, vegetal as well as
mineral, demonstrates an appreciation of nature as an acting force. Verschueren’s pieces,
whether outdoors or in the confines of a gallery, have the appeal of activity and alertness to
their surroundings. He is compelled to allow “acts of god/nature” to play an essential part in
the construction of the work. His seminal Wind Paintings (see Figure 13) created in the
seventies and eighties are large, sharply defined angles of pigment located in the wild,
marked and edged to imply right angles that mimic the edges of a canvas. Pigment is placed
within the edge, and the wind blows over the piece a subtle naturalistic chiaroscuro develops.
The temporality of his work is what initially appealed to me. Depending on the conditions of
the moment, his work might last for minutes or days. At this point the artist is appreciative
observer. He has the benefit of inhabiting two worlds simultaneously. The quiet humility he
reveals in the proximity of artist to work sets him apart from the modernist tradition of artist
as dominator and author of his efforts. Verschueren indicates that his work is designed to
wrestle free the Judeo-Christian constraints deeply rooted in Cartesian concepts of nature in
the service of man.
Gilles Bruni and Marc Babarit, French environmental artists, Gilles Bruni and Marc
Babarit approximate as close as any artists the concepts and answers I searched for in my
excavations. What intrigues me most about this pair of artists is that they answer that deepseated call to investing their work with a social relevance. Their joint efforts consider the
relationships between man and nature and the shared interactions in that space called nature.
They illustrate this quality of coexistence by beckoning the residents who live in the area to
participate. This participation broadens the scope of the environmental modifications and
takes on an educational component (see Figure 14). They further expand to include shared
concepts of nature. Their works speaks to symbolic ideas of nature that all humanity
38
Figure 13. Bob Verschueren, Wind Paintings, 1980.
Source: Baumlier, K. (2011) Wind paintings: Belgian
artist Bob Verschueren. Retrieved from
http://kristenbaumlier.com/2011/11/15/wind-paintingsbelgian-artist-bob-verschueren/
possesses. These ideas are formed by the proximal relationships we have with nature. The
child who lives in the country has a very different understanding of what is a natural setting
than the child accustomed to a densely populated urban environment. Some works have a
historical component that speaks directly, in an intimate manner, to the people who live next
to their site renovations. The works intertwine the histories of the people and the region by
creating visceral connections to the site. Like Verschueren’s work, Bruni and Babarit site
constructions are not territorially tied to the site and so are not intended to permanently
occupy a space. Their work is temporary in construction and subject to the whims of nature.
Mario Reis, is a German environmental artist who developed a very natural method
for his “nature watercolors”. His work was most influential as a bridge from the natural
setting to the gallery. I have stated that, in my own work, I could not see a clear path from the
trenches to the gallery. I believe it was the directness of his interview with John Grande that
has the greatest effect upon my work. In fact, the directness of his work is as intriguing as it
is subtly humorous. He employs a serious and seemingly scientific approach as he corrected
Mr. Grande in the interview: he does not simply place cotton canvases in the water, but
39
Figure 14. Bruni / Babarit. The Stream Path: Clothing the Banks for the
Confrontation and Cohabitation of the Commonbed, 1988. Source: Bruni
and Babarit. (1988). Image Bruni et Babarit 1. Retrieved from
http://www.absidial.fr/English/artists/bruni_babarit_cadre.htm.
employs a thoughtful methodology that is similar to that of a naturalist or field biologist. Reis
says that he works with the water source. He must consider the nature of flow, the depth of
the water and topography of the waterbed to ensure the success of the river or stream’s
sedimentary saturation. After a period of time he will extract the canvas from the water, and
the resulting sediment and minerals present in the water source will leave traces, a fingerprint
of the natural composition of that particular place (see Figure 15). His work is a biological
rendering of the anatomy of a specific area. Like Verschueren, Reis relinquishes the
absolutism of the artist in exchange for a more collaborative experience in the quest for an
aesthetic.
There were many other artists that had a bearing on the work I created. Readings of
Henry David Thoreau’s (1849) Civil Disobedience and Walden Pond, Walt Whitman’s
(1855) Leaves of Grass or C. G. Jung’s (2002) On Nature, helped to inspire me to return to
the site and resume digging, even when it seemed my actions were without merit. However,
it was the three artists to whom I returned for reassurance. Through their words and the
40
Figure 15. Salmon River. Idaho. 24x24 inches, 2000.
Source: Reis, M. (2000). Salmon River. Idaho. 24x24
inches, 2000. Retrieved from
http://www.sunvalleymag.com/Sun-ValleyMagazine/Summer-2009/Mario-Reis/
evidence of their work I felt I was allowed to tame the beast of doubt. The exposure of their
combined methodology gave credence to my work and most reflected that measure of
validation I deeply sought. I had found my lineage: a mysterious world of people compelled
to alter the earth. There is an element of science embedded in our actions. Admittedly, it was
not deep science, but it is steeped in the curiosity of the microcosmic, uncovering a world
invisible at first glance, but on deeper inspection revealed as a world of beauty.
41
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