Xara Art Installation

When WanderingAngel handed me this huge hank of marine polyester from Goodwill and said he didn't care if it came home, I was hit that I wanted to do an installation and/or performance piece at Xara. The finished product took me 6+ hours to install, left me sun-burnt and poison oak'd, and took up 15ftx7ftx8ft of space, perhaps more. It was a huge piece, and lasted less than 24 hours. It was one of the most meditative and personally fulfilling moments in its pure uselessness and zen that I can not quite put it into words... but I will try because I want to remember.I began with these tools- 20+ foot length of 3" diamater marine line, 3 pieces of 25ft 6mm orange mfp, and one 25ft length of cotton clothes line. Where it would go from there- only time would tell...I began by running semi-parallel lines between two trees over a whole bunch of boulders, then began the exhausting work of hand un-braiding the marine line down to its component strands. Each bundle of line (16 in the total rope) had 20 or so strands. I then took 1-3 strands of line and hand-chained the line into a new piece of rope.One gentleman helped me unravel rope for quite a while. three or four other people also chipped in for a few minutes, but for the bulk of the 6+ hours, it was me and my line.Me with the early set-up.The beginning chains of lineThe coils of line, undone from the marine rope.The wild mass of chaining continuesSelf-portrait as I chained, with a line of chain around my neck.To help unravel the bulk line, we threw it over the parallel pieces and spread it out, creating a cascade that caught the sun beautifully. When I went to the loo, someone left a scarf on my piece.Chains, parallel and non-parallel support lines, and the tangled masses of rope.The web begins to take form, tied off around boulders, and the individual chains woven around and tied to the support lines and then linked together to extend their lengthI tied off to a thrid boulder off towards the road and began to create a cascade down the left side after weaving pentacles and other sigil work into the web itself.I hand-knotted the cascade single-strand un-chained fibers at each point they crossed over the web.Cascade detailingMe with my web as the sun start to sink down.I chose not to use 3 of the 13 coils of line, an act of concious incompretion.The unused coils, the concept to the potential in the future, of reserves of the soul, the option to expand out into greater things and always improve ourselves.Web detail near sunsetCompleted webMore completed web.In the middle of the night I wandered out to the web after realizing that the web was just across the way from Phoenix project. I had a visual in my mind of someone trying to climb the web and falling, so I took down the core areas they might try to climb in the dark, pen flashlight in my mouth and damp line under my finger tips. I bowed my head and took in the night air, taiko drummers in the distance and the thump of the rave flying by. It was the right thing to do. In the morning, with the arches of Pheonix Project in the distance, the disheveled body of my lover lay sprawled across the rocks waiting for me to gather her up and take her away.Orange lines, orange archMorning dew on the lines as I unwove and untangled her.Wet cascade detailingIt clung to the rocks and would not let goSprawledUntied from all the trees and boulders, the art became a mass of loss and memory, became a mess, became a dream to be taken up later and raised like a lantern over my meditations.The orange lines came with me. The marine line would never be the same, for we are never the same are we? We take the core of our hopes and dreams and the failed romances and forgotten dreams get piled together as wet rope. Some hard worked and chained, some loose line never even formed into possilities but left tickling our mind at 3am at what might have been. I gather up my orange lines and find hope to go on, to build upon the memories of the past, but the bulk washes away in the morning dew.Transitory art appeals to me. This was for me. This was for the existance of truths inside. This was art.