Army of One by Janet Sarbanes

Author:Janet Sarbanes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9845289-2-9
Publisher: Otis Books/Seismicity Editions
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

WONDER VALLEY

OWENS, VICTORIA

Letter of Application

To the Wonder Valley Arts Foundation:

I am writing to apply for the Wonder Valley Artist’s Residency, June–July 2004. Your description of Wonder Valley as “centrally located in the middle of nowhere” struck a chord with me, because I was centrally located in the middle of nowhere for many years–that nowhere being the art world. I have a feeling, though, that your nowhere is more of a somewhere than mine. I hope so, anyway.

Before I was in the thick of things, I think I made better art. Particularly ages eleven to twelve, in Yorkshire. But everything changed when, as a young adult, I experienced a staggering amount of fame. That was in London, ages twenty-three to twenty-five. Something I did (a big painting of a big ape) caused huge numbers of people to take notice of me. It didn’t have to be an ape, it could’ve been a shark suspended in formaldehyde or a piece of elephant dung, but it just so happens it was an ape, reaching down from the heavens to touch the finger of God.

Suffice it to say that the process by which the ape painting – and I – became known to millions remains obscure to me. I mean, I understand it logistically – there was that flap with the Catholic League of Decency and then the giant advert in Piccadilly Circus with me reaching down from the heavens to touch a laptop computer – but existentially it exceeds my grasp. I only know that the experience shut me down creatively. In the years since, I have gradually become, like many an artist with a teething baby or an academic job, somebody who does not make work. I assume they are my primary competition for this residency in the middle of nowhere, which your literature says is specially designed for artists whose creative output has slowed or stopped. Believe me, I need it more than they do, because they have their babies and their academic jobs, and I have nothing. Oh, I made plenty of money back in the day, but I spent it all on lovers and designer clothes. And anyway, it’s not money I’m after now, or fame. What I’m after is a new beginning.

Hence, a new medium. Though I am or have been a painter, for this project I would like to do a site-specific installation. My installation, “Tumbleweed Garden,” will be a garden of tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds tumbling, not growing out of the ground. I propose erecting a fence around an acre of land to corral them – a plexiglas fence so you can see them tumbling from afar. Perforated plexiglas, so the wind blows through.

Why tumbleweeds? Tumbleweeds tumble across land that is not cultivated or able to be cultivated – perhaps because it has suffered an environmental disaster such as nuclear testing. At a certain stage in the growth cycle, tumbleweeds separate from their roots and go into motion, carrying hundreds of thousands of seeds and dropping hundreds of them wherever they touch down.

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