Abstract Expressions (2023)
installation with sound recordings, outdoor speakers, live plants, two terraces
A multi-year collaboration between myself, Clyfford Still Museum, Denver Botanic Gardens, and our local communities, to highlight the connections between Still’s art, life, the natural world, and Denver’s creative ecosystem.
At a public program in 2016, I showed visitors images of Still’s works on paper and prompted them to imagine what those images would sound like if performed as music scores. I thought about having the music out on the terraces, which needed a kind of revamp after several years of growing older. Now we are able to listen to those works in a multisensory experience. Horticulturist Kevin Williams of Denver Botanic Gardens is my collaborator in this work as his mission with plants often connects abstract concepts to living species.
Planning, design, and plant sourcing began when the Museum approved the project in 2022. Kevin created a botanical Venn diagram to connect the four places that Still had spent time that were similar bioregions to Denver, and found that about 300 species of plants exist in all these steppe areas. Of those species, Kevin chose a dozen for the east terrace and three dozen for the west terrace based on cultural requirements and availability.
Still’s works PH-417, 1946, and PH-160, 1957 inspired the terraces’ designs. However, these paintings were merely jumping-off points and that the designs are not meant to replicate the artworks themselves. Instead, the designs and plant textures follow the paintings’ energy and mood.
When visitors step out onto the terraces, their presence will cue original sound compositions. Each terrace will have different sound works with ten to fifteen minutes of looping music, from traditional classical music to narration, and electronic music from Still’s Dictaphone recordings. The west terrace, which is closer to our city sounds and borders Bannock, has louder, more percussive sounds. The east terrace is sheltered and is closer to the Denver Art Museum; that side has softer sounds, and it’s a more intimate space.
Kevin and I will return regularly for the next two years to guide and monitor the plants and sounds on the terraces as they mature.
-Text by Sanya Andersen-Vie and Clyfford Still Museum staff, adapted here by Nathan Hall.
