pound wish prescription, 2010

Sun Valley Center for the Arts

Ezra Pound Birthplace Cottage

Hailey, ID

8 feet x 20 feet x 20 feet

This work utilized an apple tree sited at the birthplace cottage of Ezra Pound's birthplace.

The arts center was provided with materials and a prescribed ritual. This included: steel placards with the text from Mr. Pound’s poem A Girl, a series of ropes to be suspended from the skirt of the tree and a large plexiglas box full of bits of string.Through explicit instructions the directors were asked to execute a ritual where as they place the poem around the tree it was spoken aloud. Each rope was then tied to the branches of the skirt of the tree. Each were then activated by a ringing of the large metal ring suspended from the end of the ropes. Visitors were then instructed to read this poem and tie a wish onto the ropes. Upon culmination of the summer all the ropes were returned to my studio where I cremated and displaced the wishes with aluminum as evidence of their release. This aluminum object was then returned to the grounds of the Pound cottage to live permanently in their flowerbed.