hundreds + thousands |
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| poetry in the landscape / writing on leaves / numbered leaves / words on leaves / words and landscape/
numbering every leaf on a tree / surrey art gallery bc canada |
| journal |
| December 20.
The gallery feels like it’s been swept, like a wind has poured through it and rearranged all the contents. Only ten small bowls are left on the main table. All the rest -- all 590 of them -- have been filled. They’ve been placed everywhere, every shelf and table brims. Three of the large “serving” bowls are empty, the rest a quarter full. I know what to do, now. It’s taken me eight weeks of this process to understand how this works. It’s like anything unfamiliar: at first there’s resistance, confusion, even blindness: an inability to see what’s right in front of you. Then, if you don’t throw up your hands and run from the chaos, it begins to make sense. Patterns emerge. The mind slowly comprehends, then rallies, joins, finds its course. You learn. I’ve never put together a show with this many interactions. The amount and depth of activity constantly surprises me. It’s not my show anymore, it’s something else: a revelry, an unexpected collaboration, bacchanalia. Everyone adds something, even if it’s just a single leaf among thousands. But most people add more than that. I find seedpods and petals cupped together, bouquets on the walls as well as in the bowls. I’ll find a clutch of leaves arranged into a fan, a face or a spiral. Leaves are pinned on doors, down the halls, onto tables and chairs and the sides of plinths. And the movement! The cycling and recycling. Berries from the serving bowls migrate into the small bowls, then they’re pinned into a red stream across the wall. Somebody placed money into a bowl. The next week someone else took it away. In early November, three Remembrance Day poppies were added. People write notes and poems and prayers, they put up doodles and drawings. There’s an elastic band, a written worry, a coloured cellophane twist, two fortune cookie proverbs, a candy. It feels like there’s been a party, a feast. The gallery-goers have had a good time. They’ve stuck their hands deep into this project and had leaves drip off their fingers. My role is to pick up the pieces, re-fill the large bowls, recycle the overflow. I clean up, then add fuel to the fire. I open up the spaces, move some things to the sides, make the place ready for more people to enjoy. I’ve figured out my role and can now wear it, enjoy it. I’ve learned to take it easy; to not insist or push. To let go of control, explore, read the notes people have left and take pleasure in what’s happened while I’ve been away. If this installation had lasted only three weeks I wouldn’t have come to this state of understanding. I’d have known what I wanted, but would have felt lost, as if I hadn’t found the way there. Time, tending, commitment, persistence -- following ones hopes -- really works. As Lao Tsu said, (and said at least a thousand times) “perseverance furthers.” |
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