REFLECTIONS (Sixth and Final Posting) hares & squares
We visited the installation on Thanksgiving weekend.
We recalled after the installation that we had taken a number of photos and then we drove off leaving the work to stand on its own. We were surprisingly quite tearful. I think we had become quite attached to the bunny shapes that we had cut out, and in our minds we had given them life and perhaps even personified them.
And yes, despite our informed understanding that they were not bunny rabbits, but hares, we refer to them as bunnies just like everyone else does.
Our didactic intent of identifying the shapes as hares that are not native is almost lost in notions of cute, if not cool, but not totally. A local paper, the Frontenac News, by total coincidence included a reporter’s discussion about hares as an alien species in the very same July 9th issue that the fieldwork project was featured in with a mention of the hares & squares project. So for that moment in time, in the Land O’ Lakes region of Ontario, there was arguably a serendipitous convergence of environmental awareness.
Our return to the installation was unceremonious. The intensity during the construction and installation had dissipated, the passion for the ideas have now carried on, the project now just a marker of our feelings at a certain time in our lives.
Plywood cutouts are not like family and friends or even the growing and living landscapes that we create or nature that we exist in. These are relationships that evolve and strengthen with time. Plywood cutouts are just inanimate things that can embody feelings and ideas that others might engage with, enjoy and learn from but they are static by comparison to living things.
What was remarkable, however, was that during the afternoon we spent in the field, about 50 cars drove by and most slowed down or stopped. The people in the cars all seemed to find great joy in the installation. Some got out of their cars to read the interpretive signs and thought out loud about the conceptual basis for the work. Many people took the time to photograph the installation and those more serious worked hard to get that perfect shot. Interestingly, the unapparent complexity of the work makes it difficult to photograph in its entirety at any given time since its configuration and orientation with respect to the sun and other elements poses challenges. It is this complexity that perhaps promotes a deeper engagement after the initial meeting with hares and squares.
The project is temporary and will be removed in the next few weeks. It will be displaced by more artwork that animates the field and the experiences of those that pass by. Even more so for those who are lucky enough to visit longer and engage more deeply with the field. It has been an interesting experience to create something that is knowingly transient. We tend to think of our work as permanent, even though we realize that everything, including ourselves, is always changing and by nature impermanent.
And accepting this has perhaps being the best lesson. The great joy and lesson in creating this project derives from realizing that we can and must channel our full and positive energy and passion into any experience, even if we are cognizant of its temporary nature.
But a greater joy was in sharing the fieldwork/ hares & squares experience with family, with friends, with the fieldwork collective and especially with the wonderful coordinator and curator, Susie Osler.
We trust this joy has been contagious!
Namaste! Godspeed!
Barbara & Real
