FableFINAL
Fable, 2025
Site Specific Installation, performance and photograph. One night public art extravaganza at The Goat Farm in Atlanta GA
Part One: Impervious
“Foot finds root, fuses to earth’s atoms. Glance across this earth but once. Something pursues & my arms break into a thousand branches.” When I read those lines at the end of Amy Pence’s epic piece O My Visitor: A Travelogue, I felt them internally, physically in my chest. It was so familiar- like they already lived in me but Id never fully felt them before. I had a sort of epiphany, an internal shift of perception. An awareness of an ingrained response to danger - be still and then transform into something else entirely. The means to become impervious. The answer to perceived danger. And grief. It begins in a fawn response and then, becomes a strong act of defiance. The transformation - there is power in that. But what is lost in the transformation? There is danger in that too. And plus, it’s impossible. Becoming impervious. With all the amazing things they can do, not even trees are capable of that.
I reread the myth of Daphne and Apollo. Despite her turning into a tree to get away from him, forever about his own desires, he remains close and declares her to be his tree and a symbol of achievement. And now - she STILL can’t get away from him, they are forever linked. There is no accountability and Daphne’s desperation to get away has evaporated. Fuck all if Apollo doesn’t still have the power in the end.
In the collective: how do you let enough of the world in without breaking? Be still and wait for it to pass. Three more years. That can’t be right. And what if it's longer? Focus on making beauty. That feels right. But then it’s hard to move.
Part two: Pinecones represent rebirth and resilience
I walk - always in the woods and more than not in a particular set of woods - when I need some help imagining an idea. This particular visit, when I was concepting a proposal for SITE, I walked for a long time and opened my mind and waited but nothing appeared. I sat on a large stone for a while, thought about beloveds lost, and then got up to go visit a favorite tree before heading home. After greeting the tree as I do, I put my hand on it and my forehead to the trunk and leaned there, tired and resting, and this fully formed vision and story appeared like it was already finished. With the lines of Amy’s poem still fresh in my mind, so formed Fable and the story of the tree and the woman dreaming in tandem. Two separate species entering each other’s world and becoming one. In this, they protect each other.