Refuge

This past weekend was the Arts in Nature Festival, sponsored by the Nature Consortium at Camp Long in West Seattle. In addition to the festival performances, artists use the 1930s scout cabins as spaces within which to mount artwork relating to sound and installation.

Refuge explored the idea of the small dwelling as sacred space. Using light, sound, scent and handmade artistic elements, the work underscored the sweetness of the intimate and the transcendent aspects of the cabin’s interior.

Upon entering the cabin, the viewer experiences a surrounding sounds of water, recorded at Swan Lake, Montana, earlier this summer, and mixed into a braided loop of sound, all by the artist. This is accompanied by the smell of baking bread and glasses of water and plates of bread on the table surfaces. Low-hanging lights illuminate the lower bunks of three beds, made up with white sheets and paper quilts constructed out of architectural house plans, vintage encyclopedia pages, and botanical illustrations drawn by the artist.

Notions of minimal existence, solitude, and comfort emerge from this sensory envelope.