David Tillinghast - P211.t45.2001

steel, masonry, paper, ink
2001

Partnership: Agriculture Department and Cooper Library
Location: In between Cooper Library and Barre Hall

This work is a 21foot high silo form constructed of brick and steel. Inside is a bronze marker with a call number, which corresponds with an artist book housed in the reference section of Cooper Library. The book contains rich black and white images of a field grasses in a variety of compositions and is a beautiful companion to the silo form.

Artist's Statement:

P211 .T45 is a site-specific project that is comprised of two parts in two separate areas of the University: an architectural structure resembling a silo on the grounds of Barre Hall, the agricultural extension services building, and an artist’s book in Cooper Library. Inside the “silo”, in the center of the floor, there is a bronze disc containing the call numbers Ref P211 .T45. When a person is reading these call numbers, he or she will be facing Cooper through the trees and across the lawn, being referred to the book in the reference section. The P211’s contain the history of writing. Thus, the tall, narrow doors in the “silo” form a visual and conceptual axis between these two areas of the University.

I wanted to make a connection between these two distinct areas. I remember studying in anthropology courses about the role of writing and agriculture in the development of civilization. The need to record the massive amounts of grain being sold or transported could be linked to the development of writing. Though the origin of writing is obscure and may never be understood, except in myth, I found enough of a connection between the two to formulate a premise for the project.
Agriculture sets out to understand nature and embellish it. It is a way of organizing and harvesting the fecundity of the nature. Writing is also a way of organizing nature, a record of events, weights, measures, ideas, etc. I chose the two forms—the silo and the book—as symbols of those two fields, both a sort of container or vessel, intended to collect and organize.

On the other hand, for the contents of the book, I chose to represent a random collection of wild weeds because of what they symbolize in the popular imagination—chaos and abandonment. Weeds, especially thistles, the center section of the book, are antagonistic to the crop. They represent something wild and uncontrollable, the opposite of what agriculture sets out to do. So, there is a tension between the domesticated and the wild. Nature always wants to go its own way, in contrast to what we want from it. The tension is always there and it is out of that mix that we spring. Agriculture and Writing are two fields that anthropologists see at the bottom of “civilization.”
The piece explores the relationship between inside and outside. Inside, one’s attention is directed back out, and vice versa. The silo is a vessel both enclosing and opening, like the action of a book opening and closing. The book, (and the library too), is a kind of vessel or field in which one enters and exits. The weed images, sparse text and dirt-rubbed pages symbolically represent an overgrown field within the confines and order of an institution.
From the outset of the project, I wanted to make something that would slowly reveal itself to the inquisitive passerby. Even though the silo structure is large, 9 feet in diameter and 20 feet tall, the piece is subtle. The masonry, the white accent bands of brick, the patina on the steel dome, all blend into the surrounding architecture. The bronze disc can easily be mistaken for any number of circular, metal caps found in the floors of buildings and on sidewalks and roads.
The closing words in the book, “field” and “join,” are intended to be a parallel between nature/ culture and agriculture /writing—that is, the action of folding the book, page upon page, is a symbolic joining of the paper and the field. Ultimately, there is no separation between nature and culture; they are the same.