Join us for our land art residency presentations.
Artist talks · Land art installations · Nature activity
Saturday June 27th
1:oopm - 3:00pm
The Verdancy Project, 30310 SE Division DR. Troutdale, OR
Featuring
Barb Burwell
Annabel Cantor
Alexandra De Luise
Christina Lafontaine
Leiana Petlewski
Free admission · RSVP required Seating is limited - Register Here
Annabel Cantor and Leiana Petlewski have worked to create a dance theatre piece that finds itself in conversation with sonic, visual, and tactile input from the lush spring landscape at TVP. Two field biologists, hard at work studying the land, find themselves battered by the gentle currents of the stream and the powerful currents of time; they become entangled in the insistent horsetails and the prickly ethics of their work.
Earthwork No. 1 (drifting experiential habitation) by Barb Burwell
Earthwork No. 1 (drifting experiential habitation) layers three concepts from prior work: the continuation of the idea of exploring the cyclical process of life, of the landscape as witness and storyteller, and the imagined language of shape.
The work is a response to observing and spending time in the landscape at The Verdancy Project (TVP), noting the elements of nature, and how one is in conversation with the other, depicted through organic forms, gesture, and the layering of plant material, some of which were gathered on site, brought in from other locations, or inspired by places I have found interesting and meaningful. Logistically, I wanted to create a space larger than human scale, where the viewer can enter the piece and its surroundings, encouraging them to engage in the idea that we are but small elements in this vast world.
Additionally, I thought it would be interesting to build on my previous site-specific installation, Listen - Gather – Reminisce, from Terra Incognita, a TVP Project, looking at the concept of the landscape as a witness and what a specific, and intentionally created site might become over time. With that, the landscape became a storyteller, and I imagined its language as shapes.
The shapes, from the shape language I have developed, are the foundation of this piece. It is, however, a temporal foundation that is an opportunity to speak to time, inviting the ephemeral nature and its eventual disintegration and decay into the conversation. The planted beds will change shape as the plants grow. They will go dormant in the winter, emerge in the spring, come into full leaf and bloom in the summer, and start to recede back into dormancy in the transition into fall, to meet winter again.
