IN THE FOREGROUND:
Rob Duarte

Story #2 (the one with the hammers), 2003

Concrete, steel, found objects

WALL INSTALLATIONS:
Dawn Southworth

Spirit Trap
Pathway Crossings + Way Station + Treeman’s Refuge

Driftwood, Found Objects

Spirit Trap is comprised of wood and debris birthed up onto the shores of my hometown, the Gloucester coastline. Dragged back to my studio, where I cleaned and catalogued each piece, the installation has been culled from the Ocean’s offerings. Vast, immeasurable and profound, the sea covers much of the Earth’s surface connecting different lands and societies around the Globe.

Treeman’s Refuge: Solid and strong, this wall signifies home, shelter, safe harbor and the private domain.

Pathway Crossings: The ascending cruciforms have connotations of journeys traveled, memories remembered, and the afterlife. The cardboard walls, whitewashed and nailed, are fabricated from boxes belonging to me. Used over many years for a variety of purposes: storing family history; packaging treasures from my travels to distant lands; gifts delivered; and containers.

Way Station: Simple and meditative, a table and chair. Way Station offers the viewer the opportunity for reflection, becoming a sanctuary to record one’s thoughts with writing and mark making.

During your tour of LocalMotive; Art Off The Beaten Path, please stop at the Way Station. Pencils, paper, envelopes and pins are provided for your marking purposes, please leave a note, a drawing, a memory, a request, a petition, a wish….

Spirit Trap is partially funded by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Artists Resource Trust.

IN THE BACKGROUND:
Jesse Isaak-Ross

You are held, 2003

Glass, wood, hay and twine

For the past ten years, my artistic vision has lived in several gardens I have installed in community spaces locally. My desire to contain life force in form in order to communicate the feeling of being "at home" in a given place has fueled my gardening efforts. In most cases, after a season or two, I will pass the gardens on to someone else in the community. The garden then becomes a vessel for community involvement and local "ownership" of the place. Once initiated, the conversation created between land and people takes on a life of its own.

"You are held" represents my first effort at an individually-guided work in some years. Although, unlike the gardens, the form of the bear/goddess is finite and fixed, it nevertheless utilizes the hay from a field to invite the observer to become "at home" by sitting in it. The form itself responds to what I perceive to be a basic lack of nurturing contact within the popular "culture" of the United States at this time. I perceive a lack of trust and meaningful emotional "attachment" in families as a symptom of the larger trend of fragmentation that is literally changing the face of our planet. Just as we must choose to trust another person, we can also choose to notice the many subtle ways our very existence on earth suggests that "we are held."

Many thanks to Jim Higgins, Joan Ross, Jeff Lowe, Kirsten Spille, and Kaylin Two Feathers for their help in the process.