Drift Project

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Reno,+NV&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=30.185946,86.220703&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Reno,+Washoe,+Nevada&ll=39.524137,-119.813311&spn=0.007167,0.02105&z=16

Above is the map for my drift. It is not highlighted, but it shows the general area I was in. My boyfriend and I drove downtown, parked in the Cal Neva parking garage and wandered outside in search of something we could follow. My idea of the drift project was to find something that interests you can you can follow without necessarily paying attention to where you are going. I walked around in front of the garage until I found my first photo. A beautiful arch at the top of a building down the street. I photographed it, not sure what it was that drew me to it or what I could find to relate to it throughout my drift. I continued walking down Virginia keeping that first photo in mind and looking for something new.

Nevada Museum of Art Fieldtrip

I walked around the Chester Arnold exhibit, On Earth as It Is in Heaven, many times looking for the perfect work to write about, but it somehow eluded me. I glanced over the mountain of tires, the rickety, broken bridges and the men with shovels, but nothing caught my eye. The whole exhibit seemed slightly depressing. I couldn’t escape the nagging hints about the cruelty and mortality of mankind. When I had just about given up on Chester, I found it. Simply titled, “Histories” stood out among its neighbors of garbage filled streets and massacre scenes. There was a story in the work that I could interpret. Chunks of a tree trunk lay strewn about forest green grass, cut open to reveal their long, beautiful rings of history. Nearby, coiled among the grass and twigs lay a rope tied up like a noose, the only clue that man had been behind the death of the wise old tree. Being the writer that I am, I instantly wanted to write about this tree. About what it had witnessed, about the storied it couldn’t tell. The artwork made sense to me, I knew Chester Arnold created the piece to “ask viewers to consider the impacts of human and industrial consumption, accumulation, and waste on the natural environment,” as it was put so eloquently in the Reno Tahoe blog Renowned Artist Chester Arnold Premieres Exhibition at Nevada Museum of Art. I was able to understand mortality that was so evident in the artwork, as it usually was within the other works in the exhibit. I was ecstatic that the artwork was making so much sense to me, as that is usually not the case. I was simply overjoyed with the idea that the story that was furiously scribbling itself down inside my head was what I saw when I looked at “Histories.”