REPARATION

Mixed Media – Found, and Split Sandstone, Plaster of Paris
Approximately 2” x 3” x 2 ½”

“Why is there sand in the deserts? Because windblown sand collects in every low place, and deserts are low, like beaches. However far you live from the sea, however high your altitude, you will find sand in ditches. In roadside drains, and in cracks between rocks and sidewalks….Clay particles clump and lie low; sand grains pat and blow about. Winds drop sand by weight, as one drops anything when it gets too heavy for one’s strength.”
For The Time Being by Annie Dillard

A product of the ongoing dialogue about impermanence and material change as a marker or derivation of time. Even the most statically thought of materials evolve, degrade, and shift given a long enough period of observation. As humans, we often desire to intervene, repair, or “save” – perhaps as a means of penance for the guilt we assign to ourselves for being a part of (or apart from) nature. (I remember futilely trying to save bees from swimming pools as a young child…only to watch them return back to the water’s surface after I had plucked them out of the pool and placed them safely on the deck surrounding the pool.). Reparation begins to ask whether the saving/mending is necessary or if the human manipulation is simply a means by which I am connecting in a different way to nature – and whether the intervention is counterproductive. As the sandstone is “healed”, the natural process of degradation and/or evolution is thwarted. The white scar documents the act.

Postscript. There is much that could be discussed regarding geological events and related losses that have occurred in our geographical region in recent years, as well as throughout history. This is something that still feels too geologically and emotionally recent to comment upon at this time and I look forward to revisiting this topic in the future when greater objectivity can be brought to the subject.