Louisville Blogs

While my poor riverblog has been waiting for me…I have quietly been having one of my more creative years at the Falls of the Ohio State Park.  When I visit the river, I’m making several projects with the junk I find as I walk along this familiar landscape.  My previous post shows some of the ways I have played with color and form using other commonly found and mostly plastic materials.   I also had fun this summer creating my own absurd brand of figurative sculpture from the river-polished polystyrene I have collected and stored out here.  Beginning in May of this year, “we”, meaning myself and the public,  have successfully added new figures to a growing site-specific installation at my favorite outdoor atelier under the willows.

One wonderful development is that on three different occasions, visitors discovering my site have interacted with or added their own figures to this group from the materials I have left behind for that purpose.  I did “harvest” a couple of figures after they made their first appearance here for a group show I’m participating in October 2017 at Murray State University.  That exhibit is entitled “Folk Fiction” and I’m elated to be showing at my old undergrad alma mater.  Besides, it’s always good to have survivors.

Autumn began with a visit from my equally anonymous nemesis…forever branded by my sons as the “Smashers”.  Whomever they are…they don’t play well which has resulted in the recent vandalism of several of these figures.  More about them later.  Now seems as good a time as any to provide a short history of this figural Styrofoam group I call “The Assembled”.  This story begins at the river on May 14, 2017 with the creation of the first sculpture.

After a wet spring with frequent bouts of high water, I was able to configure a site under the trees and near the old railroad bridge.  Over the next several months I kept adding recently found materials from the area while I pursued different art projects.  This was the first Styro-figure I created here and he’s a bat-earred naturist!  After he explored the landscape of this day in many other images, he eventually took his position greeting visitors to my outdoor studio and soon to be growing gallery.  As this installation grew, each new figure was photographed in different contexts at the park before joining the others back at my eastern most studio site.

My next figure is also the largest.  I remember needing to wait until enough of the absorbed water was gone from this big hunk of Styrofoam to just be able to lift it.  I call this piece the “Queen of Clouds” because the sky was so beautiful on the day it was made.

I remember that the wind kept blowing this figure over and it was difficult to get it to stand in place while I shot this short video.  The large fan blades that make up this sculpture kept falling off until I found a better way to attach them to her head.  The nose is a large wooden fishing float I found out here.  It’s mouth is the plastic cap from a deodorant stick.

Here’s another large figure from the month of July.  I really like how expressive the head turned out on this one.  His mouth is a red reflector that really caught the light well.  I dragged this one down to the Ohio River and documented it with this short video and lots of photos.  Afterward, it too joined “The Assembled” at my river studio.

One of the fun moments during this project was discovering visitors had added two new figures enlarging this group to four!  By days end, it was five figures with my latest absurdity with the bright red reflector mouth.  I was starting to get excited by the opportunity to create a nice little crowd this summer since plenty of Styrofoam remained to be used and people were playing along instead of just destroying what was on hand.  I also started to piece together a couple of other projects nearby.  One began at first with just a handful of found flip-flops of various colors and sizes.  Each visit to the river usually resulted in more found foot wear to add to the design.  I also created a colorful  rainbow-like arrangement from discarded plastic containers that also was a stand alone piece, but also went well with the other projects.  As the summer was approaching its height, wild grapevines were beginning to frame my grouping at the Falls of the Ohio.

As the summer wore on I couldn’t wait to visit my spot and listen to the oriole’s call and the sound of running water.  My site was always changing and my sculptures had survived a few summer storms as well as being vulnerable to vandalism.  So far, so good and so I continued to add new pieces here when I visited this section of the park.  Here are a few more for your enjoyment.

I took “Mr. Mosquito Nose” home with me after this picture and he will reappear in an exhibition I’m participating in the early fall.  This next piece turned out to be a visitor favorite.  He began with me finding a flipper that I used for his headdress and the fishing lure that became his nose.  Between what I found that day and what was already in my collecting bag…I soon had the makings of an orange and greenish-yellow theme for this shamanic or high priest figure.  The staff he sports is capped with a found plastic jet toy I came across on the riverbank.

Here he is in context with the other figures as the month of July began to pass.  If you like trains crossing over bridges then you might like a couple of the videos I have here including this one showing an early flip-flop project at this site.

Another day and another figure and in this sculpture’s case…it’s pretty silly and strangely neurotic looking with its crossed fishing float eyes!  Here he is posed sitting on a driftwood log with one leg crossed over the other.  Soon he too would be added to “The Assembled”.

Here is a video that is a good overall site view of my outdoor atelier and it shows this latest figure in the fold.  It also features a passing train crossing over the old railroad bridge and yet another flip-flop arrangement in the form of a large spiral in the sand.

I like the way the spiral turned out and I tried working with the found colors as best as I could.  There is so much individual variation between each sandal…right or left, large or small, bright blue versus dark blue, etc…  I do feel that this piece really added to what I had already started here with “The Assembled”.  Here is a still image from that moment.

We are into the month of August now and I keep adding figures and rearranging my site on a regular basis.  It’s generally a very good month for me if I can get out to the river three or four times.  Plus, I like to also do projects in other areas of the park and so a few weeks might pass before I next visit this particular studio site under the willow trees.  I thought this next figure turned out nicely.  It was aided by finding a nice hunk of polystyrene that was irregularly shaped enough that it could imply motion.  He has a friendly demeanor to him if you can ascribe such qualities to an altered chunk of river-polished Styrofoam?

Here is the video from the end of this day showing this piece in the context of my studio under the trees.  This clip also reminded me that it was a hot day peppered by annoying gnats that also buzzed around the camera.  I will mention that generally speaking…biting flies and mosquitoes are not usually an issue to visiting the park.

Still two more figures to go before the fateful day the Smashers appear and reality reasserts itself.  I improvised all my figurative sculptures on site from materials collected out here.  I still feel it’s important for me to respect the hard-won shapes that nature has provided.  Interestingly, I still feel that the river “humanizes” Styrofoam in particular by knocking of the hard edges and generalizing the overall forms.

Moving very slowly and deliberately, the “Happy Hunchback” cranes his neck toward the treetops.  It’s late August, have the orioles and indigo buntings already left?  If it weren’t for the other life forms also inhabiting the Falls of the Ohio, this multi-year “art” project would not have sustained my interest alone.  I can’t believe my luck!  Between the time of this figure and the next…a visitor added another sculpture and awarded my Shamanic sculpture “Best in Show”!

I had stashed this green plastic ball with my rainbow-colored plastic containers.  Makes a fine award and I have to admit, that I did put a lot of time into this particular figure.  I’m sure I had the biggest smile I can muster when I first saw this.  Whomever you are…thank you!

Another view from that day showing my overall site with a different found flip-flop design and my plastic container color spectrum on the left.

Just one more figure to go before that fateful day when the Smashers stop by and temporarily put a hitch in the magic that was this summer at the Falls of the Ohio.  I am amazed that nothing negative had happened sooner.  In the back of my mind, I understand that the river always has the last word in this process and so I don’t get too attached to the things I make out here.  Weeks would go by before I would re-visit this site in the eastern section of the park.  I was also spending a lot of time in the western section of the Falls of the Ohio which has a different quality to the landscape and receives fewer visitors.  I like to visit there when the purple loosestrife flowers are blooming because they are magnets for butterflies and other insects.  Moving on, here’s the last figure to officially join “The Assembled”.

With his spiky hair-do and wide smile, the likable “Raccoon Eyes” likes to pause for refreshment when he can at the Falls of the Ohio.  Locals visiting the park bring these giant cups and I guess seeing all the other debris that has washed into here makes it okay to leave more trash behind?  The world is just absurd…and hence this project.  Old “Raccoon Eyes” took a hit, lost and eye, along with one of his arms when the Smashers came by.  Here is one more video this time showing my site before fate intervenes.

The little figure I ended the last clip with went on to have an adventure of his own and didn’t become a part of “The Assembled”.  He’s a close if diminutive cousin.  The Smashers came and went and it’s fortunate that more wasn’t actually destroyed.  My naturist character, who was the first character here, had his head split in half.  One of the volunteer figures that appeared was decapitated and I found its head in the tree branches above where it once stood.  The “Happy Hunchback” lost all the features in his head and was rendered permanently senseless.  The “Best in Show” figure lost and eye and his staff, but looks repairable.  I think whomever did this ( teenage boy(s) loom large) must have had second thoughts while in destruct mode, because it looks like some sculptures were barely touched.  I like to think that this is what happened and perhaps a little remorse set in before complete havoc was wrought.  I found a nearby stick that I remember setting aside for future use that more than likely served as the weapon.  I can imagine the temptation to not “light saber” all of them into bits must have been great.  This is my best interpretation based upon reading  the scene.

Of course you know that I’m not going to leave it here.  When I came upon the scene, I took some pictures and then off for a trek across the fossil beds and had a great day walking to the hydroelectric plant.  Yesterday, I brought my friend Peter Erwin along for a visit to the Interpretive Center and afterward we visited my studio site.  Using what I had on hand…I repaired what I could and recycled other parts to create new personas to replace the previous ones.  I think it’s going to be okay and I look forward to experiencing the continued evolution of this developing site.  I still have a little more work to do, but this is where I left it yesterday.  As for this post…one of my longer ones…reveals the level of engagement that this special place still holds upon me.  I think it also appropriate at this time to rename this group of survivors…I’m now going to call them “The Re-Assembled”!  Until next time from the Falls of the Ohio.

Comments Off on A Short History of “The Assembled”