“Every living being, accordingly, grows and reaches out into the environment along the sum of its paths." Tim Ingold
When working with fictional or literal, natural and built environments, the process pushes for an essential engagement with the immediate and remote boundaries of space. Following the interactive thread that links, binds, compiles and transforms, form and content may become a parallel experience uninterrupted by distance and location. The work maps the elusive edges of an ever-changing container while the approach considers the journey.
Where does the site begin and end?
When making a site-specific artwork one is concerned with the immediate, historical and intended environment and the context it would live in. How to transcribe these parameters into a piece which would be a part of a remodel for a personal living space?
Naturally, such project requires a greater concern with the principles of interior design, placemaking and the very needs of the inhabitants of the house. At the same time, where are the actual boundaries of space of an artwork mounted on a wall?
The approach in this specific piece was to synchronize the form within the architectural framework while paying attention to the geographical and topographical location of the wall it was mounted on.
To experience site-specific is abstract.
A wall is constructed in a house, a house erected at a street, a street built on a hill…While sitting across from the work, in the heart of the space, one would face westward, going uphill then down towards the sunset, the Puget sound; seeing the outline of the Olympic Peninsula to become a bird’s eye view scenery and there is the ocean…
There is a larger compass which keeps the coordinates of a work, and its content and form are also a conglomeration of the multiple paths of crossover. The impressions of the streets surrounding the place, the sounds, the waters. The work is being filtered through the impressions of these collected observations in a form of photos, sound and salt water samples, all collected at different time of the day.
While observation may be the a core pillar in a scientific method, the qualities of these samples are in no way measurable but more impressionable. They are imprints of a memory. Impressions of an impression. They are real, yet, ephemeral.
They are informed by the perception of existing elements like water, rocks, movement of air, sound, color, reflection of light, the landscape, the evaporation of ink-imbued water onto the paper surface. At the same they are grounded in the very reality of an interior.
One may think of this process as a document of the undocumentable essence of perception of a specific moment. The work becomes an album of moments making a concrete expression, specifically related to a space and the actual making of a place with all the attributes which come with it, while being rooted in its own worldly experience.
Dear reader,
Thank you for spending time with Artist Journal!
This year, I’m taking the challenge to write one blog post prompted by a relevant to my work question. Feel free to leave a comment and share what you are curious about.
Best regards,
Mariya
Fresh air. Breathing beauty. Inspiring.
What an insightful piece of wiring into your process. Looking forward to hearing about the next one!