The Narrative of Life

I was watching Art21 this morning as I was having my coffee.  It is a program that interviews artists of note who are making a lasting contribution to their respective crafts in the 21st Ce.  The  program generally takes the viewer into the artist's studio, focusing on 2 or 3 pieces and how they came into existence.  This last episode of Art21 Series 6, focused in part on Sarah Sze's Still Life with Landscape, a temporary installation on The High Line in NYC.  As a gardener, I am intrigued by the nature and habitat of The High Line.  On how an abandoned place such as this, in the middle of an urban setting, has in it's neglect, reverted back to a place where habitat exists.  The High Line is near the top of my list of places I wish to experience, along side the Dupont Estates in the Brandywine Valley and Arley Hall in Chesire.
Sarah's Still Life in Landscape was conceived as sculpture but also one that would serve as a habitat for the wildlife on The HIgh Line.  As I watched her constructing the 1 to 1 scale model in her studio I was struck by how this piece was so much more than just sculpture and habitat.  Still Life, at it's core, became for me a representation of our existence on this earth.  A representation that in it's detail expresses a very potent narrative on the beauty and complicated nature of that very real yet ethereal force that exists within all of us, that force called Life.  Sarah freely admitted that Still Life is at its core a sculpture and that she approached the design of it from that point.  That she focused on using found materials such as metal and wire, materials she could find in local stores.  However, Sarah also said that her sculpture was designed to be a habitat, a place of sustenance and refuge for the wildlife of The High Line.  As she worked she talked of her purposefully constructing Still Life to exist amongst the plantings, to be one with them, yet stand separate mimicking their life force as it is nestled along the edge of the walkway.   In addition she said she wanted the sculpture to be close to where the visitors could experience it, where they would become in essence a part of the installation, just as the wildlife would be.
Before I get to philosophical let me describe the piece.  Still Life in Landscape originates from a single source of bundled wire at ground level that then rise upward separating into individual paths of polished thin steel bars that slope gently upward fanning out into space ending about 7 feet off the ground.  Balanced within those bands are aesthetically placed nesting boxes and feeding stations for the wildlife as well as horizontal pieces of steel bands for support.  In a effect the square nature of the nesting box is repeated in the horizontal and vertical elements overall.  Another section of the sculpture exists on the opposite side of the walkway, mirroring the theme so that the walkway effectively splits the piece in two.
However meaningful all of this is for her as art, Sarah's Still Life represents for me our experiences from birth unto death and beyond.  That like Still Life, our lives begin, originating from a single point of universal force, thereafter sweeping upwards, as we age,  separating into many distinct paths from which our life experiences are formed, paths that are created in relationship to the world around us.  That the nesting boxes and feeding platforms are spaces within and without us designed as places of sustenance and refuge.  Places that are shaped and defined in juxtaposition to what is the negative space.
Once the scale model was finished the program then switched to Sarah and her workers building Still Life on site.   Sarah talked as they worked about the idea of creating a sculpture where people could stop and observe the wildlife as it exists in space and time.  The idea she explained was the intention of getting people to stop and observe the work for 10 minutes.  That 10 minutes is actually an incredibly long time for someone to just observe.  She went on to say too that she was also concerned about whether the habitat would even be used by the wildlife of The High Line, that if they were not drawn to it, Still Life would still have to stand on its own as sculpture.  That placement for her was as equally important as design, where viewing the sculpture from a distance would then create the negative space in which the piece could exist, one that would be transformed the closer you get until you, the viewer, enters the work becoming one with it.
By the end of the segment I was just sitting in awe.  Watching Sarah create Still Life in Landscape on site for me was an experience of how complicated and fragile the nature of human existence can be.  That we are, at birth, unformed as individuals; yet we possess all the wisdom of the ages, wisdom that at it's source is rooted within the universal energy of Mother Earth.  That we begin to take form as a result of our experiences of our formable years separating into many different paths within and without that support and sustain us, making us as complicated and varied as we are unique.  That as we move into adulthood our structures, created in response to those earlier experiences, are solid but not set in stone.  That in reality they are in their basic nature just as fragile as life itself.  That as Still Life was conceived as a temporary installation, we too can dismantle, recycle, and rebuild, transforming ourselves  into something that is more closely aligned with that source of  energy we inherited at birth.  That in a very personal way there was the acknowledgement that at the end of my life I will be looking back in awe and reverence at my very complicated and varied experiences on this earth while at the same time I am looking forward with anticipation of what is to come next.