Steel, bailing wire, aluminum, video, graphite
Di Rosa Art and Nature Preserve
MFA Selections 2006
These two companion pieces describe perimeters. The first perimeter is of a typical suburban lot, the second of Winery Lake on the DiRosa Art and Nature Preserve in Napa, CA. 1/3 acre suspends hand-made bailing wire replicas of a Gunter (or surveying) chain. A Gunter surveying chain is 66 feet in length, divided into 100 links. The chain's invention by Gunter in the 1600's codified a square acre as ten chains on each side. 1/3 acre as a perimeter of 260 chains or 2600 links. The chains hang forming a three dimensional representation of a flat ground plan in ten link increments.
For Winery Lake: perimeter, I walked around the perimeter of the lake using a radio-controlled boat mounted video camera to document the waterline inscribed on the land. I edited the footage to an eighteen-minute video piece. Both pieces are part of a larger series titled "unsurvey" in which I explored land physically and conceptually through historic and current methods of surveying.
