In the Fabric of the Woodland
September 19, 2019 - December 20, 2019
Juniata College Museum of Art
“Of course the devil is here in the fabric of the woodland.”
This quote from the 1971 folk horror film Blood on Satan’s Claw, reflects the mindset of Euro-colonial culture: Nature was unnatural. Wild things were to be feared, and wildness, tamed. The continental United States currently contains only remnants of the wild, leaving a managed, subdued landscape. We can only wonder what it was like to hear the howls of eastern wolves, or to lose the sun in a massive flock of migrating passenger pigeons. The devil is not an ecological system, but rather, systematic human-centricity.
In The Fabric of the Woodland is a conceptual public art project that is co-created with the community, transforming animals into a hybrid language of commodification and poetics. Electronic moving message boards, a familiar advertising technology, speak wild moments in less-than-wild spaces. Words conjure images, unique to each viewer, of regional species. Animals — extinct, extirpated (no longer existing here, but existing elsewhere), endangered, threatened, depleted, and displaced — find refuge in our most immediate and intimate space: our imagination.
Rather than sequester work within the gallery for observation, it was dispersed. For three weeks, five message boards traveled around the borough. Responses from the community, including stories, poems, and artwork, were collected, curated, and installed in the gallery. What was exhibited is the evolving and changing (bio)diversity of response.
Henry and Mabelle Shoemaker Gallery
“The exhibition... is essentially co-created with our communities – crowdsourced and evolving with additions and revisions throughout the period of display. Rather than the artist sequestering her work within the JCMA for observation, it has been dispersed, and what is exhibited is the diversity of response. This is at the forefront of adventurous museum practice, and reflective of the future of museums…”
Community Responses
Soft sculptures first placed and photographed outdoors on Juniata College’s campus then installed in the Shoemaker Gallery. Project courtesy of Professor Rob Boryk.
Dreamscapes by Digital Art students. Images (based on dreams, memories, myths, or landscapes) created used objects scanned into Photoshop. Project courtesy of Professor Gordon Stillman.
Digital Photography student responses to In the Fabric of the Woodland. Projects courtesy of Professor Gordon Stillman.
Native Species Ceramics. Project courtesy of Professor Bethany Benson.
Prompt cards given to and returned by community members.
Messages to extinct Passenger Pigeon collected on Juniata College’s campus and Raystown Field Station.
Response drawings on white.
Response drawings on black.
Response drawings on red.
Animal Origami created at the Juniata College Museum of Art.
Thank you to everyone who made In the Fabric of the Woodland possible.