I was at the Bullitt reservation in Ashfield, MA the other day as part of a group of artists making things together – outdoors. Walking around the mown fields, I loved the lines tractor tires had made haying the field and the fallen vegetation stretching to the dark green of the forest beyond. Tentative light green spikes of grass made their way up through the browns and tans of the dry, linear grasses and forbs. Where before, so much of this field had been vertical, it was now a collection of horizontals stretching over a subtle curve. In one particular spot, I wanted to see a curve of grass, and I wanted to see what it would feel like to encounter that curve after moving through line after line of cuts. It was a slow process at first, gathering, twisting, arranging, but as I moved through the field, I gained a better understanding of the material, and changed my working method, and the line improved and the work moved along. My mind wandered, from form drawings, to line making, to efficiency, to this thing my neighbor said about his Uncle Dwight who used to live where I do that “he could not plow a straight line to save his life.” I think about that often – the value our culture places on the straight lines, efficiency and work. How many times have you heard some one praised for slowing down, or not plowing a straight line? I guess it’s a touchy subject, because I fall into the curvy line camp.
This line was a great start. Its physicality, sensuousness and ephemerality freed me to experience ideas that I have been working out in my mind. With the memories I have of forming the line out of the grass I have a great springboard into projects I have been dragging my feet to initiate.
