Jesse English
Kinetic Artist
Artifacts
This is a rare image of the machinery under the water-surface that make the project Cadence a working system. One of the aspects of Cadence was that the work put into the aesthetics of the machines would go unseen in the film. As an artist creating artifacts that appear to be ancient and the purposes of their function undiscovered, I wanted to experience something else related to this.
Maybe most creations in history have decayed and have been forgotten. They may have been made in materials such as wood or bone, and they have gone unrecorded. I wanted to experience more of this loss. Simply put, Cadence is a film that would show the action of an object without revealing the form or purpose for the function witnessed. After the film was created, I destroyed most of these sculptures. Well, I have experienced that loss, so now I feel free to display the form.
Below there are more examples of artifact/sculptures.
I have moved from North Texas, to Eastern Arkansas, then to North Carolina during the last few years. With each move, It takes quite a bit of time for me to become comfortable with new areas I am living, to the degree that I am ready to use it as a place to film. I have been searching out opportunities such as Soaring Gardens to speed the acclimatization of comfort with new settings. I came to the retreat open to having the landscape lead the project. The first day I drove the winding paths, considering the old structures, farms, woods, creeks and mountains. With each rolling hill, and around every turn, is a new scene of beauty pasted over the last, juxtaposing the next.
I found myself most comfortable within a short distance, or at the Bunnell Hill Church; near this location is where I created the cairn project. Though my work was done near the place I was staying, the decision to create a cairn was in response to the layering of mountains on the horizon, the visually stacked rolling farmland in the middle-ground, each scene being cut and separated by valleys and rivers, and the overall diversity of the landscapes of the region. The retreat was an encouraging experience that has helped move me forward, I believe, in my quest to enter a new environment and be more quickly prepared to interact with it creatively.