Longing
a very tall chair and a record player arm circling unevenly . . .
We need each other and cannot find each other—in different countries consumed by cultural difference, in different bodies consumed by ego. How do we shift our consciousness from isolation to connection? We are in a time period where the “baby boomers,” the biggest population-surge ever, are burying their parents. As we do, their history is also lost. They are the last generation to grow up on a farm, fight a World War, and believe in the “American Dream.” As this resource is lost, we are groping, trying to anchor ourselves in time. The record player’s arm moves erratically over the constantly circling turntable, where are you? I am here. Where are you?
Longing, repurposed chair, turntable, fishing pole, 2010
Tying Windknots
“Windknots” is a term I borrowed from the book The Shipping News. In this book the old uncle ties windknots into fishing line in order to conjure a curse against his young nephew. As a result of this action, the nephew’s family home blows over in a fierce winter storm. This sculpture, Tying Windknots, is how I understand where we are as a civilization. We have a wheel to go forward and a rudder to steer, co-joined in a gripping but motionless dance.
Tying Windknots, 2′ x 3′ x 2′, bicycle wheel, fur, rudder, Turtle Bay West Coast Biennial, 2012
A Perfect Day
“Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.” Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
“Sights, sounds, colors, smells and touch can all propel the mind to a different time and place. Within these remembrances, images form and fade, allowing a glimpse of the past and a sense of nostalgia to ensue. Belinda Hanson explores the complex nature of nostalgia in her piece A Perfect Day. Jury-rigged from disparate elements, A Perfect Day becomes a singular element, or rather a tool, for sifting through a lifetimes worth of memories. Sifting, sifting through memories shifts the mind into gear, informing the present, giving context to the present, while at the same time those memories take us back an hour, a day, a year, or more. It is as if the present coincides with the past, on dual planes of time, one different from the other, but the same. The whole concept is a rather slippery slope. It doesn’t make sense at all, or does it?”—Rebecca Harvey
