Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Act of Walking

In the first year of Jane’s botanical work she recorded 32 plant names and described 12 of them in her notebook. These samples were easily found near her home and I can imagine her taking some small time from her domestic work to wander near the house, seeing and listing what was around her.

In her second year of collecting Jane described 140 plants in extensive detail and clearly had expanded her territory to the surrounding woods and wetlands. The plants are wild and would have required Jane to explore the varied landscape of the Hudson Valley. This sort of collecting couldn’t be done while carrying out chores or catching a breath of air. It would have to be a planned activity and as I imagine it, would require less wandering and more deliberate walking. I interpret Jane’s walking as an act of independence; a means of breaking away from domestic routine and the usual social norms and setting out on her own, absorbed in her own thoughts.

While I collect the various bits and pieces of Coldengham and Coldenham, I also walk. I follow roads Jane would have travelled and walk through fields and woods near the farm. I also view the contemporary infrastructure and plan field trips to try to understand the various choices and changes that have occurred here. As I walk, I photograph and make notes in a process probably not all that different from Jane’s.

Now, as I begin to structure the information I’ve gathered, it seems natural to arrange the images and texts into a series of “walks” representing particular places, events and objects. This structure imitates both what I imagine of Jane and my own walking explorations and becomes part of an installation tentatively titled Looking for Jane: Coldengham to Coldenham.