Layers at the Boneyard


I don't know exactly what it is about the boneyard creek that draws me into its hidden corridor, but i suspect that it is precisely because it is a hidden corridor that makes it such a strange and wonderful place. The portion of the boneyard that i am speaking of here has been completely re-envisioned by an engineering intervention that has rendered it something other than what one might consider a creek. The banks have become vertical corrugated steel walls reaching a height of 12-14 ft. and the channel itself has been converted to a smooth continuous slab of concrete. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect are the culverts that pass below the streets and parking lots of Urbana. The culverts are excellent examples of what I would consider unintended architecture in a landscape that is something of a second nature. The experience of walking through the culvert is like no other one might find in Urbana and for me represents a kind of hidden sublimity.
I think that it will be useful to use this blog space to begin to catalog my findings at the boneyard and consider the strange beauty that exists there. There are many, many examples of surface patterning that result from the transformative and dispersal power of water that find many particular forms of expression in the boneyard. The series of photos above are an example of the patterning that results from the oxidization of the vertical steel banks and the layering of moss, lichens, light and shadow. It is hard for me not to consider these panels without the influence of art and picture making, but these panels are, i assume, very much alive in that they are slowly evolving and in a motion that speaks to the rhythm of the lichens growth and the earths movement.
I had almost forgotten that i created this blog back in 2009 during an internship at Franconia Sculpture park in Minnesota. I thought that it might be smart to create an online portfolio as a basis for turning on the world to my singular genius. Well, its now a little over a year since the last time i posted and my evil plans, luckily for the world, have somehow been derailed. I have new intentions. It seems strange to have public journal that is potentially accessible to whomever might happen onto it. Its exhibitionist like and part of the facebook digital mirror world that seems so vain. So, here i am, talking to the mirror. I used facebook for a bit but was ultimately turned off by the weird pressure that develops when i know that others know i am there and i don't want to chat with them. Jeez! facebook induced guilt. The blog on the other hand is like talking into the void. There is a potential audience of everybody but realistically these typed words are just little grains amongst a vast electronic landscape. I can write with the void as my audience.
I have always wanted to write and have managed to scratch out a couple things here and there when required or necessary; maybe the blog can help to draw out the pieces and parts, the unfinished thoughts that bounce around the brain and begin to bring something into focus. Yikes! I think that writing must be an integral part of the "examined life" so let me begin to examine in the presence of everyone. A public introspection. Its never too late, right?