WINDS OF CHANGE

Fairfield is a small town located forty minutes from San Francisco on I-80. A former train stop, this North Bay town is noted for the strong winds that blow the yellow grasses and oak trees that dot the surrounding hills. I chose, in this piece, to use a model train because earlier in this century, trains were a relatively new technology that were harbingers of the industrial era. They ordered the landscape and made it accessible to vast numbers of people. Like many man-made systems, however, the attempt to impose organization resulted in chaos and to some degree, environmental and social devastation. To illustrate this idea, I created a train track mounted five feet off the ground making a perfectly flat, artificial horizon. Viewers entering the gallery set the train in motion. As the train made its cautious but directed way around the periphery of the gallery (150' overall), it passed over several switches, one of which made a whistle blow. Another when tripped, turned on two large industrial fans which caused a waste paper storm to swirl about the middle of the space. As the viewer left, everything returned to a static, quiet state. Winds of Change is, in part, about cause and effect, and the role of human beings as perpetrators of technological change. The ambivalence I feel about technology and progress is related to the historical and contemporary effect change can have on nature, negative or positive. With Winds of Change I wanted to convey this dichotomous role technology plays in our growth, development and lives.

Winds of Change, 1996, Site-specific installation, Fairfield Center Gallery, Fairfield, CA; paper, toy train and whistle, industrial fans, text cut into sheetrock walls, 12'x 12'x 60'