Peterman 2/28/2011
The concept for the Granary project emerged from a decade long fascination with a small grouping of Han Dynasty burial ceramics in the Asian collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. They caught my attention one day, not just for the humble rural elegance that I've always admired in them, but as objects invested with ecological knowledge that in a surprising moment appeared legible to me. This small suite of ancient objects–a pigsty latrine, a small grain milling shed, a granary–spoke directly to my ecological concerns today: my garden; my interest in waste, nutrient, and energy cycles; my interest in food systems and food security; back-to-the-land desires that I'd been shoe-horning into a city of 8 million. As funerary objects, they reminded me of my mortality; they made me ponder what, if anything, I might want to take with me into the afterlife–or leave behind. But most riveting, was the recognition that these modest proposals from the Han Dynasty were offering me a new perspective on where to position myself across an enormous spectrum of time. They provoked the recognition that I was standing, and living my life, at a halfway point on the way to the year 4000. I continue to digest this discovery.
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| "Pigsty Latrine," wood frame construction modeled after Han dynasty original. Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY |
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