rock, print on cardboard, needle, stick, edition of six, 2005
We had bought a piece of the American West that came as a perfect square. The 10 Acre piece of land was part of a larger grid that was used to subdivide and sell occupied territory.
The Ordinance Act of 1785 divided the western territory into townships, sections, quarter-sections, and so on. The grid helped to deal with the land from a distance. We lived in NYC at the time, which had adopted its own master street plan in 1811. Our lives had been influenced by modernist architecture. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. Square facades. Square windows. The grid was not only a vehicle, it also made us think and work harder and more efficiently with the images on our computer screens. We had the technological knowledge to handle Millions of square pixels that had been squeezed into a perfect grid. We spend hours doing just that.
The spinning wheel offered squares an alternative state of being. If one spun a square fast enough it turned into a perfect circle. It was a pleasure to witness.
