Throughout history, man has attempted to understand interpret the world around him by using ritual. Attempts to control the weather, acknowledgements of passing time, and markers of space have all been used ritualistically to mark mans presence on the earth. Irish travelers leave cairns beside a trail on a pilgrimage to a 4th century abbey, while Inuits construct rocks in simple human forms to memorialize the passing of the human spirit. Constructions and manipulations of the earth remind us that we were here, and we are not alone. There is a solid weight behind these constructions, and a spiritual weight behind the ritual involved in their creation.
In this ongoing series, I am using the concepts of human ritual and manipulated to space to create my own mark upon the landscape. For each of the final prints in this series, I take several rolls of images, after constructing and manipulating the landscape. Some of the constructions take mere moments in a flash of inspiration, some trails and hikes I go one lead to no constructions at all, yet I know I have left my mark. Only certain marks, however, are captured on the film, and deemed suitable for memorializing as an image, to study and contemplate the ritualistic nature of the work.
There is a long history of earth constructions and ritual even in contemporary art. Artists like Robert Smithson, Richard Long, Walter de Maria and Carl Andre all have used manipulation of the earth to make varying statements. For some the piece is about their own personal ritual and experience, whereas others create their works for the ritual of public experience. I have created these works in a tradition that straddles both ideas – these constructions are left in place after I have completed them and photographed them, yet the finished photographs offer no identification other than the numerical title that refers to the altitude at which the construction is found. I invite the viewer to contemplate the images of the constructions without a frame of reference as to the time, place or environment, and instead enjoy them as a personal meditation upon their place in society, allowing them to consider their own rituals and spaces.