Words on Works
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Spiriting: Life in Wyoming
with the Gingerbread Man
Jessica Holt
jholt@wave.sheridan.wy.us
Physical space is the space of the steel Gingerbread Man and my dogs and my body, objectively experienced, and the physical event of moving us together in ritual. It is the space of my body as the determinant of my existence in the world. It is the space of my sense, of the feelings I feel when I interact with the Gingerbread Man and the dogs and the earth. It is me, bigger than the dogs, smaller than the Gingerbread Man, infinitely smaller than the land. It is the land close and the land far away. It is a quiet and a noisy space. It is a space that smells of winds and of the earth. Physical space is the space of primary perception.
My artwork recounts a direct experience with a specific physical space, using technology (my invented machines), physiology (my body), animal science (my dogs) and natural science (the Wyoming foothills) to define that space.
I have invented a series of machine tools, which, through their symbolism as matrix and through their unessential but concrete functions---including measuring, casting shadows and marking ground---exhibit a direct relationship with physical space. These machines include: the Harmonic Monogram Scribing Machine, 1986; Epicycloid Scribing Machine, 1990; Gingerbread Man Scribing Machine, 1992; Angel Cookie Cutter Machine, 1993; Ground Squirrel Surveyors Square, 1993; Sheep Path Sounding Machine, 1996; Pocket Gopher Tunnel Digging Machine, 1996. These machines set up illusory, symbolic and real boundaries, which change as the machines are moved or as they are used for different functions, with different media (mold to hold grass clippings, frame for a rawhide coat, scriber to mark metal, digger to mimic a gopher). Thus, repetitive use of these archetypal machines does not produce like products. Each product is unique and possesses subjective, unmeasurable elements and objective, measurable elements. Each product presents itself as that place of interaction between physical space and virtual space, a place momentarily in some kind of balance [1].
(Fig. 1)
The Gingerbread Man Scribing Machine, a 5 1/2-x-8-ft-x-2 1/2-in oversized steel cookie cutter (Fig. 1), is the first machine I have used in an interactive manner as a "companionable form," recording its movements in various environments, including my walks with it in the hills. This machine has several distinguishing features: a set of sharp wheels for work, for dry ground and flat surfaces, made of 3/8-in-thick steel plate, 2 ft in diameter, attached by a clip on the axle; a set of bright, red and shiny rubber wheels for play, for soft or hilly ground, 1 1/2 ft in diameter, attached by a clip on the axle; a 7-ft-long pole that slides through two steel loops attached to the body, providing a pulling arm; a hollow body made of 3/8-in-thick steel plate and boasting a 3-in rectangular loop on its belly that allows the body to be picked up by a fork lift; and a tripod to hold the toting arm, providing a home for it when the machine is at rest.
To date, the Gingerbread Man Scribing Machine has participated in many random events, but only one regular event---the walks with me and my dogs in the foothills near our home. Beginning a walk with the work wheels, I lift the toting arm off the tripod and pull forward, moving slowly at first, turning the body off the gravel and onto the grass. We leave trail marks in the gravel as we move. Entering the grass, our presence seems willful; the grass is high and our intrusion there bends large groups of stems first one way and then the next. We break path and roll along, close to the earth. Care is given to the degree of incline; we use it as our guide, preventing the weight of the form from leading too fast down the hill. We work together---the gravity of the earth, the place of the hill, the weight of the machine, the strength of my body, the movement of the dogs. The borders meld: movement in one causes concurrent movement in another. It is a symbiotic and empathetic relationship. We play to each other. We slow down when Mebbie, the Bernese, has a sit-down strike. We speed up when Zack, a beautiful, fleeting German Shephard/Collie mix, is too far afield, out of sight. And when the walk gets long and steep for Andy, smallest and eldest of the three, we look for smooth ground and a place to change the wheels.
Like the machines before it, and those that have come after, the Gingerbread Man Scribing Machine is a motif and a mediator for my subjective life, carrying the story of the spaces I live in and the things and animals and people in those spaces. Such machines become poetic devices. Use of the machines in real physical space, in a ritual sense, sets up a myth, repeating a story over and over, offering the possibility of living a reality where our subconscious selves can have flight.
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Note
1. See R. Williams and J. Boyd, Ritual Art and Knowledge (South Carolina: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1993) for a discussion of physical meaning in virtual space.
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