Community Reflections

UPPER ARLINGTON PUBLIC PARKS | UPPER ARLINGTON, OH | MAY-AUG 2013

My installations, “Memory Boats: Community Reflections,” are poetic imaginings upon the interplay of how memory impacts a community’s sense of identity and place. These site-specific installations were created for the City of Upper Arlington, with the hopes of engaging the public in interactive ways. The two installations in the public parks ask the viewer to ponder and move into a state of reverie, where upon they can imagine their own stories playing across the boats, as they are carried in the breeze, floating between the realms of the real and imagined.

These outdoor installations consist of white memory boats containing historical stories on scrolls. The boats are hung from specific trees within the park, and are designed to inhabit space in the community as they gradually fall apart over time, becoming part of the community’s memory. As such, these fleeting and ephemeral boats are symbolic containers for the community’s memories; and like all memories, they will gradually disintegrate with time, melding into their environment.