Over this past Summer, I renovated my family’s barn. It had not been painted in 30 years, equaling my current age. Through stripping, sanding, priming and painting, I enter a history in speaking about rot, time and care. I left the figure of the mustang’s surface un-treated in a gesture of paying homage to the “core” of the barn in leaving the exposed deterioration that marks time.
Dear Heather,
Your homage to the history of your family’s farm is compelling. I appreciate your ritual-like activities to restore the barn. They are clearly evoked in your humble act of scraping off the accumulation of peeling paint. However, you seem to have broadened the definition of ‘death’ and ‘beyond death’ to include revitalizing a decaying architectural structure. This meaning is the opposite of the ‘beyond death’ theme of this project. That is because you are intervening in the natural decaying process of wood, a biodegradable material.
One way to make this work relevant to the Beyond Death exhibition involves allowing some part of the barn structure to continue to deteriorate. Perhaps you could even encourage its rotting and its ability to be returned to the material cycle as soil.
Over this past Summer, I renovated my family’s barn. It had not been painted in 30 years, equaling my current age. Through stripping, sanding, priming and painting, I enter a history in speaking about rot, time and care. I left the figure of the mustang’s surface un-treated in a gesture of paying homage to the “core” of the barn in leaving the exposed deterioration that marks time.
Dear Heather,
Your homage to the history of your family’s farm is compelling. I appreciate your ritual-like activities to restore the barn. They are clearly evoked in your humble act of scraping off the accumulation of peeling paint. However, you seem to have broadened the definition of ‘death’ and ‘beyond death’ to include revitalizing a decaying architectural structure. This meaning is the opposite of the ‘beyond death’ theme of this project. That is because you are intervening in the natural decaying process of wood, a biodegradable material.
One way to make this work relevant to the Beyond Death exhibition involves allowing some part of the barn structure to continue to deteriorate. Perhaps you could even encourage its rotting and its ability to be returned to the material cycle as soil.