I had initially imagined the Ghost Sanctuary as a durational piece that would grow and change throughout the summer. While this has remained essentially true, I’ve found that it actually became a bit more of a singular, completed work in the Autumn, but one built upon the versions of itself arrived at throughout the summer. Are these different? Maybe not. They feel like two different ways of making something to me, but I’d have to do some more thinking to express exactly why. Regardless, the sanctuary became much more about process, attention and meditation than about documentation, which I guess may be at the heart of the difference between how I initially conceived of it and what it ultimately became. Something which is, in retrospect, truer to its function as a monument and space for reflection, I think.
The first step in the summer was delineating the shape itself. Throughout this process I’ve been fortunate to have the help of my trusty and supportive partner Stephanie and our dear friend and studio neighbor Shea Meyer. Shea and I marked out a 40’ circle in the yard with flags, weed-whacked its border and set to finding a more permanent and sculptural way to mark it out for the final piece. Perhaps because the church was built by an iron magnate for his workers, there’s no shortage of cast iron fence parts and remnants from various versions of the building’s landscaping around the grounds. Outside behind the kitchen we found no less than 14 former fence posts rusting in the woods, having been stashed there after one of any number of cars careened through the fence at the bottom of the hill over the years. We figured 13 was the appropriately theatrical number of markers to delineate the circle, so we did the math, spaced them at equal distances around the circle and hammered them in. Next, I found some aesthetically appropriate cast iron finials and chose the correct rope for the Spectral Border. Quick to find, thanks internet, but slow to arrive, these minimal adornments were 1/3 of my overall aesthetic plan for the Ghost Sanctuary (the other two parts being a sign indicating the space and a box of pamphlets at the sidewalk level).
In all parts of the process I was concerned with walking a border between theatricality and a sort of minimal, unobtrusive stateliness of tone. This is a territory I find very attractive and spend a lot of time mining in my work, I think. The border between earnestness and staginess, the feeling of uncertainty as to whether something is deadly serious or a weird joke and what it means not to know the difference. On the stagier side of things was the first version of my sign. True to my initial idea, I wanted it to be an extremely blatant white-on-black-with-an-arrow style sign indicating the presence of GHOST SANCTUARY —>. After about a week, however, it became clear that the sign was working only TOO WELL when strangers started just walking into our home looking for the ghosts (something, I will add, they would never in a million years have done if it had been my intention for them to do so) at which point I took the sign down immediately to re-design.
Throughout the summer I whittled down the look and function of the Sanctuary. The most significant and frequent element of this work was the tending of the borders of the circle, which I did when necessary with a scythe, and only at dusk. Important to the appropriate painting of this picture for you is the fact that, at the bottom of our hill, just across the street, there is a bar. We’ve never been to this bar. There’s no conflict with them whatsoever, it’s just clear that it’s not, shall we say, for us. To put it briefly, we moved here during deep lockdown times, just briefly after the much dreaded election, and this bar was always quite open and clearly a safe space for folks that, it was clear, didn’t share our feelings about these two major issues of the time. At any rate, if one stands in the parking lot of said bar, the hill and the church is more or less the only thing there is to see. So, suffice to say, we’re aware of one another but maintain a respectful distance. However, when a large, unexplained circle appears on the hill and a small man in black appears at sunset to scythe around its border every night, it understandably draws attention from the regulars. This was certainly unsurprising, and the extent to which it was noticed and discussed remains outside my knowledge, but throughout the summer there were a handful of interactions.
As I was honing down what and how the Ghost Sanctuary was throughout the summer, the question of my own character (as the sole visible human element) was definitely one to consider. I decided on a uniform (all black, work pants, black button up shirt, wide brimmed black straw hat), but was unsure what I would do if anyone talked to me. Do I respond? Am I just me when I’m out there, or am I someone else? Am I even a person? One evening, while scything, I had an interaction that made me decide to adopt a rule of non-interaction. It wasn’t hostile by any means, it wasn't even rude or unwarranted. But the way it made me feel just felt contrary to the purpose of the piece. I wasn’t sure how to answer this person’s questions while maintaining the tone I wanted for the work overall, and decided it would be better to just be a human-shaped thing that cuts grass from then on. Here is a transcript of this interaction:
(Older man walks over from bar parking lot, smoking. Approaches fence and gestures to me)
MAN: What’s the uh…purpose of that circle?
ME: It’s a monument.
MAN: To who?
ME: The Dead.
MAN: The Dead? (smokes) Well…That’s kinda…odd.
ME: Well. Life’s weird.