BEQUEATH is an installation merging sound, poetry, and sculpture. Embedded within the sculpture is a 5.5 minute audio track of voices - human, amphibian, avian, and tellurian. The sound is activated when the viewer comes into proximity with the suspended form, thereby initiating the conversation that reaches across time, species, and place.
The audio track consists of my voice interpreting a poem by Gregory Orr This is what was bequeathed us (from How Beautiful the Beloved, Copper Canyon Press 2009); the songs of two recently extinct birds; and the voices of water and thunder.
The suspended form was a Techniklavier - a soundless practice piano that had belonged to my father, a pianist - that I first deconstructed then added the other parts: the rusted suspended tray of sheet metal; the sheet music; text; and ceramic sphere.
I am grateful to Gregory Orr for writing this poem and for his blessing in letting me borrow it; to the Macaulay Library of Ornithology for granting permission to use their recordings of Bachman's warbler and the Kauai O'o; to the waters, weather, and vernal ponds where I live. And to the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist regrant administered through Arts Mid Hudson for supporting the creation of this work.
View the 5:27 minute version here. This is the full length audio track accompanied with images. Video by Wes Milholen.
