2023 - ongoing.
Redwood Time.
Redwood Time is a collaboration with The Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense Physics, in Fort Bragg, CA.
At the center of Redwood Time is a radical, as in root, study and re-envisioning of the monumental Redwood Round adjacent to the Guest House Museum on Fort Bragg’s Main Street. Cut from the ‘largest Redwood tree known to have grown in Mendocino County’, the Round functions as roadside spectacle, as tourist attraction, and as a monument to the timber industry and the settler town that grew around it. If one approaches closely enough to read the timeline pinned to the round’s face: from its rings have been conjured the tale of how this one particular story fits within the context of canonical world history.
In this way, the tree’s rings, measuring time, offer us a mirror. The pins and the plaques, the timeline, and the saw blade adorning the round are what certain people saw and wanted to see when the round was dedicated by the people of Fort Bragg in 1943.
What do we see when we look at the round today? What do we hope to see tomorrow?
In the spirit of exploring these questions, we are creating a 1:1 scale fabric maquette of the 18’ diameter Redwood Round. Through unfolding events considering a multiplicity of histories, species, natural philosophies, and concepts of time itself, we are adorning this round with a new timeline, and new accoutrements.
What dates will it memorialize? What accessories, what talismans will it wear?
The Fort Bragg community donated personally and historically significant fabric, which was then dyed in a community gathering using locally gathered plants and mushrooms. The enormous pattern was cut out in the community gym, and the pattern pieces are now being stitched together by hand.
Beginning June 21, 2024, a series of community programs will engage participants in developing ideas for a new concept of time and markmaking on the fabric round.
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At the center of Redwood Time is a radical, as in root, study and re-envisioning of the monumental Redwood Round adjacent to the Guest House Museum on Fort Bragg’s Main Street. Cut from the ‘largest Redwood tree known to have grown in Mendocino County’, the Round functions as roadside spectacle, as tourist attraction, and as a monument to the timber industry and the settler town that grew around it. If one approaches closely enough to read the timeline pinned to the round’s face: from its rings have been conjured the tale of how this one particular story fits within the context of canonical world history.
In this way, the tree’s rings, measuring time, offer us a mirror. The pins and the plaques, the timeline, and the saw blade adorning the round are what certain people saw and wanted to see when the round was dedicated by the people of Fort Bragg in 1943.
What do we see when we look at the round today? What do we hope to see tomorrow?
In the spirit of exploring these questions, we are creating a 1:1 scale fabric maquette of the 18’ diameter Redwood Round. Through unfolding events considering a multiplicity of histories, species, natural philosophies, and concepts of time itself, we are adorning this round with a new timeline, and new accoutrements.
What dates will it memorialize? What accessories, what talismans will it wear?
The Fort Bragg community donated personally and historically significant fabric, which was then dyed in a community gathering using locally gathered plants and mushrooms. The enormous pattern was cut out in the community gym, and the pattern pieces are now being stitched together by hand.
Beginning June 21, 2024, a series of community programs will engage participants in developing ideas for a new concept of time and markmaking on the fabric round.
︎︎︎