Public Safety called our department this last fall semester. They were concerned about potential vandalism to one of the trees near Johnson. For once, I was one step ahead of them (hard to do, they do a great job on campus). I’d already stopped one day and introduced myself to Lydia Jun.

Lydia was a student in Sanford Mirling’s Sculpture I class, and was designing a piece using one of the Princeton Elms along Chateau Road. I love it when students use the landscape in their classwork.Lydia had used long steel rods bent into a U shape on one end, and draped the rod up into the branches of the tree. The other end of the rod was gracefully connected through wood to a person seated on a wooden stump. As the wind moved the branches of the trees, the motion would carry to the occupant of the stump.

I wanted to share her work on the blog, and asked her to send me pictures when she was done, and a brief description. As always on my blog, click on the picture to download the larger shot. Guest blogging begin, and thanks Lydia!

 

Naturalism

I’m currently in Sculpture I with Sanford Mirling. My project was supposed to be a wooden prosthetic. The following is the statement for our sculptures.

Is there every enough time? Four performances take on the typical time constraints of a Middlebury student and attempt to resolve them through whimsical, and at times absurd, extensions of the body.

But I found this idea of cyborg somewhat silly considering our bodies make us perfectly capable of doing tasks while there are people out there in the world who are missing limbs. So I played with this idea of Restless Leg Syndrome which the restless leg is treated as a disease. It’s somewhat disturbing how far people go to attempt to control their environment. My piece demands this sensation of restless limbs from the shuddering branches to the person. Also, the large movements of the trees which transfers to tiny movements of the limbs is a backlash to the demand for big results with the least effort in society. “Imperfection” is beauty. Subtleness screams.

The tree and I got along in harmony.