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Pillars of the Past has been a work in progress in many ways. This past semester I took a view camera course hoping to continue my study of texture, especially in my ongoing telephone poles project. My professors recommended compositions based more on landscape then on pure texture and so, begrudgingly, I tried something completely new with the poles and actually found myself pretty pleased with the results. It didn’t change my concept but rather allowed me to expand upon it. I found that varying the distance and space that the poles took up within the image created an interesting play on the idea of a microscope: examining them up close and then far away; examining how they related to their surroundings and to people passing by.

The project is still a work in progress, so the title(s) and artist statement may change, but this is a little bit about what I was working at:

When I first moved to Halifax one of the first things I noticed in the city were these wooden telephone poles covered in staples (as well as metal poles covered in old packaging tape and fliers). A lot of these poles were so completely covered in staples that the actual pole can no longer even be seen. They appear instead as old rusty pillars of metal, their actual wooden bodies sometimes only apparent high out of reach of staplers — and they’ve managed to get pretty high!

The poles intrigue me in their placement in a modern pristine setting, a reminder of old traditional methods of communication juxtaposed with our sleek cell phones and laptops. Our current ability to send information at what seems like the speed of light throws our older communications into a rather unflattering light. Yet I find that these unique, chaotic, ragged bulletin boards speak more to being human. What I also find interesting about the poles is that, in their settings, they appear ugly and small. Oftentimes, students volunteering go around town removing the staples in these poles. These interesting entities from the past are, like many old buildings or artifacts, removed because they interfere with a skyline of hard lines and shiny glass.