Participating Artists: at Carkeek Park: Anette Lusher April Lelia Thendara Kida Gee Chris Papa Barbara De Pirro Gabriel Brown Aaron Haba Brian Gerich Miguel Edwards By Hand Fiber Consortium Reginald Brooks Stephen Rock Zucker, Turner, Jacobson Peppé Julie Lindell Matt Babcock at Point Shilshole Beach: David Francis Dan Smith Sylwia Tur Eden Rivers Teresa Burrelsman Sponsored by: Center on Contemporary Art Carkeek Park Advisory Council Seattle Parks and Recreation Associated Recreational Council Supported by: 4Culture Site Specific Seattle Mayor's Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs QFC Potter Construction		Site 8: Brian Gerich Seattle, Washington Consistency 2011 UPDATE: This piece was destroyed in the process of being removed by a Parks Department employee who felt that a cable supporting the piece might be damaging one of the trees. CoCA regrets this incident, and apologizes to the artist. Unfortunately, the removal was done without our prior knowledge. Heaven is often considered as a place or idea that is a spatial foil to where we as humans physically are. It is the special other, out there, above the earth somewhere. Similarly, in the case of interpreting nature, many among us believe that nature and wilderness are special places that exist only outside of human contact. These interpretations can vary from person to person, community to community and culture to culture. We are forever returning to these relationships; sometimes holding values, sometimes rethinking attitudes. Just as we may consider a philosophical heaven as above or away from earth, we can also consider the ecological ‘heavens’ as the atmosphere above the earth’s surface. This atmosphere is in fact a mix of various elements, gravities, pressures, and energies extending from the core of the planet to the sun and beyond. As the sun’s energy heats the earth’s surface and oceans, temperature differences create atmospheric change, weather and wind. We share this atmosphere instantaneously, always, but are not usually cognizant of it. In my own understanding of heaven and nature, there is no consistent relationship with earth or humankind. These concepts are constructs of our own values and any relationship is relative. What interests me is experiencing how these ideas collude, momentarily overlap, sway, change. In this case, there may not be any cycle, return, or balance, but rather an evolving flow of thought or ecological transformation: one in which heaven and earth, culture and nature, are sometimes the same, at other times different. Perhaps the one thing that is consistent is inconsistency. This piece is an exploration of heaven and earth and cycles of return at a philosophical and environmental scale through spatial mediation as well as at a scale of material intervention. The semi-enclosed space provided by the three cedars is augmented with a suspended wooden orb that hovers between earth and heaven. Spherical and complete from afar, on closer inspection it reveals its imperfect geometry and faceted or tiled construction. Its outer skin is semi-solid and the spherical form is open within: a conical cavity shaped by suspended wooden tiles opens to a circular portal above. The portal frames the sky and tips of adjacent cedar. Standing within the orb, within the cedar tree space, horizontal views are limited and a visitor is twice removed from the surrounding park atmosphere; wrapped in the ‘natural’ enclosure of trees and the fabricated enclosure of former trees. The thin wooden shingles used to create the orb are loosely affixed to a frame and as the breeze picks up these shingles rattle and shake. Aurally, they both obscure and augment the winds travel through the cedars. Visually, they vibrate and deform the orb’s spherical shape, both from within and from afar.