Windpack

Title: Windpack
Time/Place: 
This work was made during my August-September, 2023 Artist-In-Residence at The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska USA

Size: 59” x 42” x 38”

Materials: backpack frame and harness, fake fireplace plastic, seed spreader disc, discarded: shade tent poles, tent poles and kite poles, architectural lumber wrap, household window blind string and hardware, washed ashore: watercraft paddle/blade, wood stake with string
seed spreader plastic disc

This is a process photo and video of a test-experiment at the Missouri River on September 20, 2023. I have yet to determine how this moment relates to the final nature of this work.

Details:
Windpack’s function is unknown, but its large breeze-catching blades spin easily and might allude to self-propulsion or motive power. This piece is wearable; its backpack-frame and shoulder and waist straps inserts the notion of a human body. The portability and inclusion of a walking stick that doubles as a water paddle, suggests Windpack might be needed or used in various locations. It might be a tool, a mechanism of support or safety much like a grab-and-go kit or bug-out bag, is kept on hand in anticipation of emergency.

Yet what does this backpack contraption actually do? Windpack represents a predicament, a stalled place of concern. It is a place of floundering powerlessness and the invisible trauma of anticipated harm or doom. Albeit meager, Windpack nods toward hope. It reflects a modicum of capability in which to invent new systems, to re-imagine a sustainable, equitable existence. It is my hope that our time of extreme polarity and climate chaos forces us to act as a collective.