America is a site-specific installation in the Showroom Gallery that will be used as the setting for the Wofford production of the Suzan-Lori Parks 365 Days/365 Plays Project.

365 Days/365 Plays started in November 2002 when Suzan-Lori Parks committed to writing a play a day for the next 365 days. From Nov 13, 2006– Nov 12, 2007 the 365 Days/365 Plays National Festival will present the work simultaneously across the country, creating the largest collaboration in the history of American theater. For more information about this project, please visit the official website http://www.publictheater.org/365/

America is inspired and informed by weeks 22 and 24 of this project, and will be the setting of each of the 14 plays to be performed within it.

What was so striking to me about this series of plays is the cellular nature of them. Isolated, the plays are short, often under a page in length, and feel like parables without discernable morals, or poems, or vignettes, or dreams. Alone, they feel like fragments. As a group, they are amazing. They become something bigger than just the sum of their parts. They are a unit, a vast story made up of hundreds of little stories.

In creating America, I wanted to mimic the cellular growth of Parks’ plays through the installation’s material nature. Old denim clothing, when pieced together, becomes as vast as the sky. Translucent plastic cups can form bilious clouds by arranging them according to their size and taper. The fingers of vinyl gloves become blades of grass, garden hoses become vines, and pantyhose stuffed with brown plastic grocery bags form the limbs of a tree. These disposable items, when totaled, become both a complex creation and the simple, universal landscape of blue sky, white clouds, and green grass.

In the weeks leading up to the staged performances, gallery visitors can expect to see this landscape change and evolve as elements are added and taken away. Believe it or not, this will all become an interior setting over the course of the evening on April 12th (and again on the 13th). Don’t even ask about what we’ve got in store for you the week of the 27th! In the mean time, you can come enjoy it as it is, as part of the Artist-in Residence Exit Show.

“The Hunted” was recently chosen for a show at the Dangenart Gallery in Nashville, TN. The delivery date for artwork just happened to be when I was in the middle of sewing together my 500 square foot curtain of denim clothing, with the piece’s deadline looming closer every day! So I packed up 3 garbage bags full of old jeans and jumpers and drove up the mountain to Asheville where I met my mom who had agreed to help out with the drive. As she drove, I cut apart the clothing along the seams so I could use both the front and back of every article. The weather had predicted rain, but it was warm and sunny the whole way to Nashville. We delivered the sculpture on time, I got all my denim cut, and we barhopped to the twang of bands playing for the bills they collected in jelly jars. I wan’t able to make it back in time to see the exhibition set up, but the gallery is going to represent me until August, so hopefully I’ll make it back for another show. Next time, though, I’m going to dress for it. Nashville style is funky and shiny, layered and short, and all the girls’ lips are candy-apple-corvette red, and their eyelids blue and green and violet. I’ve heard that rhinestones are acceptable on a daily basis, and that’s a beautiful thing.

Here are pictures of the show. Check out the Dangenart website; they’ve got a lot of interesting work. http://www.dangenart.com/index.htm

Scarecrow Wedding is a Temporary Art Installation at the Cottonwood Trail in Spartanburg SC made by Leah Brown and Brian Hitselberger.

This project would not have been possible without the love and support of the Spartanburg Community, especially from HUB-BUB and SPACE.

The Scarecrows are beginning their return to states of solitude, although some are still lingering in the marsh, clinging to their last moments of company. If you would like a Scarecrow of your own, come by the HUB-BUB building this Saturday, March 31st, during the community yardsale, and you can pick one out, free of charge.

And now I will show you how to make your own Scarecrow Wedding.

First, choose a location. Somewhere scarecrows could inhabit your peripheral vision. A place of dried grasses, sharp stakes of trees, and soft earth.

And then you need permission. A simple drawing should do the trick.

And, permission granted, gather your lumber, your nails, your old clothing, some hay, and make frames. Frames are simple things. They are made of three pieces of wood. 2×4s work fine. You’ll need: a 10 foot length for the center stake, a 12 inch length for the hip bar, and a 1-6 foot length for the arm bar, depending on the Scarecrow’s gesture.

Saw them up.

Then nail them together.

Slip one pant leg up the stake, leaving the other leg limp.

Stretching the shirt over the outstreched arms may not be easy. It’s better to use shirts with buttons.

Tug down the sleeves, and you’re ready to stuff.

Staple the pants to the hip bar so they won’t slide down later.

Really emphasize your Scarecrow’s contours by wadding up the hay before you stuff it in.

Stand it up and check it out, fine tuning the shape if necessary.

Put it with the rest. Drink some coffee. Repeat the above steps until you have 43 Scarecrows.

And then the Gathering begins. Brace yourself. Swing the free leg over your shoulder. Keep the stake in front, balancing the weight of the body behind. Don’t hold it too low: it will catch on uneven ground. Take them into the outside. They were only developing in the studio. Exiting into sunshine, they are born.

Pile them into the bed of a red pickup truck, and carry them into the forest.

Let them lean on the trees while the others arrive.

Then don waders. The February mud is deep, cold, and full of unpredicable smells.

There are several methods of squelching Scarecrows into mud. All of them suck. I encourage anyone interested to devise their own Scarecrow-sticking proceedure.

But then, after a grueling few days, you have something incredible before you. It is dusk, and the air is chill in an exhausted silence interrupted only by the flutter of dresses over water. Gather your tools, now, and head back to the truck. You have a reception to plan.

An incessant knocking on your door might not be another responsibility rising. It might be Peter, flown down from New York, with champagne and chocolates, a Valentine’s surprise. Suddenly everything’s faster, there’s dinner and drinking, hellos and a show downstairs that we miss because even though Scarecrows make high heels less fitting, the night is alive and buzzing, it’s a Friday, and we walk, too happy to be tired, past the glowing windows of restaraunts and bars, talking quickly of love and of art, Manhattan and manhattans and oversweet cosmopolitans, of yearning and the whole world. The whole world, and everything is too full be carried without spilling, and it’s morning, and there is still a reception to plan.

Sometimes, things can just fall into place.

Thank you to everyone who made the journey to come see this installation and event!

Special thanks to everyone who immortalized this project in pictures. Included in this blog were photographs taken by Jeffrey Young, Stephen Long, Brian and myself, and Justin Plakas, whose pictures of Scarecrow Wedding appeared on the Wooster Collective website on March 7th, 2007. See them here at http://www.woostercollective.com/2007/03/scarecrow_wedding_in_spartenburg_south_c.html

If you have pictures of this installation that you think are really good, I would love to have them in my portfolio, especially if they were taken in unusual weather or light. You can either contact me through this blog and I will give you an email address that can capacitate picture attachments (this one can’t), or drop off a cd at HUB-BUB. I will credit you and post them here!

bedsheet and plaster. more to come. i like these.