Grass Hall Installation

Grass Hall Installation view. Materials: Knotweed, tall dropseed, salt grass, heats, her aster, Snow-on-the-mountain and other dried plants collected from Cheyenne Bottoms. Metallic thread, jute, seed bottles, compass, a madonna icon, fossil, 50 caliber shell, plastic animals, feathers, grass carp gill rakers and teeth, journal entries, red chalk...

Grass Hall detail of handwritten journal entries and notes, with knotweed twigs, heath aster

The previous shots are from a found object installation exhibited in the Hays Art Council salon 1010 in Hays, KS. All of the dried plant material, bones, feathers, with the exception of some miscellanea from my personal collected were all collected at Cheyenne Bottoms, an interior wetland in central Kansas. Finding the objects was in itself a present-building experience in itself, which I can only hope transcends into the manipulated forms of these organic materials. Thinking from a hermetic's standpoint, the grass reminded me of latent potential - the standing litter of last seasons growth has been symbolically repurposed; 'spun' into golden and other metallic coloured threads to convey a sacred intent in their new life. These new boughs of material have been placed in such a manner as to represent otherworldly structures, and also to something more familiar and sentimental, including shadow boxes, nests, and the material surrounding an animal's den. These portals  of grass and bone and feather are meant to conceal and protect the precious things within.