"Sanctuary In The City" An Installation

My installation Sanctuary in the City occurred naturally, or as naturally as a mattress being woven into the branches of a tree can be.

The mattress was discarded after a fellow student’s performance at SFAI. I was lucky enough to be in the meadow at the same time of departure of ownership, sunbathing with my friend J. Brinkley.

I suggested we move the mattress into the tree, and he agreed to assist by lifting it up to me. I climbed the familiar branches and directed and secured the foreign cushioned surface in the limbs of the buckeye.

I placed the mattress to its final resting position, but in that moment it did not occur to me that I was in the process of installing art. It wasn’t till half an hour later when I returned to take a nap in the usually empty tree, when I realized the piece excelled in conversations that I’ve been trying to provoke in my practice over the past year in a half. From 1:00 P.M – 7:00 P.M that day, the buckeye was full of visitors, people who had been at the school for years and admitted to never climbing the tree before that day.

I returned several times throughout the next week, speaking with several visitors in the buckeye. Their stories varied; some had not climbed prior to the mattress, others said that it provoked memories and they took great comfort in the space, some said the mattress made the height seem less dangerous or scary, others remarked to their own personal ties to the breed of the tree & how the platform created a great space to observe the manicured nature.

I found it was increasingly difficult to climb the tree with the protruding mattress in the limbs. But those who hadn’t climbed the tree prior to installation, did not know that the mattress put them at greater risk and admitted the mattress made them feel safe & secure.

The dialogs were correlated with my research regarding the extreme domestication of our generation. It's intriguing how a domesticated society interacts with the natural world; how nature is perceived as dangerous and putting a domestic object in the landscape makes people feel more safe. In truth domestication of the natural is proven to be increasingly dangerous and detrimental to our environment and threatens our existence.

Sanctuary in the City created a space for people to be able to reflect on the state of the natural world in the hands of humans. This piece spoke towards nature as an increasingly depleted fundamental aspect for the development of humans and as a valuable tool for meditation and comfort. Simultaneously the piece made a critique on the way our generation is more likely to take interest in the natural world when it has been manipulated by humans or has a familiar humanized object in it and how this too is detrimental towards the future of humans.