Spotlight On... - 02/11/10

Cameron Poole ’12 had been experimenting with different forms of art her whole life, but when she enrolled in Professor of Studio Art Eric Nelson’s Winter Term class, Art on the Land, she underwent a total immersion in the medium unlike she had ever experienced before.

For the month of January, the small group of Art on the Land students lived on the Trinchera Ranch in Colorado and used their landscape as their instrument and inspiration for their many different creations. Poole sat down with The Campus’ to give her take on the transformative month.

The Middlebury Campus: What was the basic goal of the class?

Cameron Poole: Wow. Okay. First question. The basic goal of the class? I think that was different for everybody. But it was about nature and being inspired by nature in your artwork. So people took very different and crazy directions with that. Some went anti-nature … And then other people used it to make beautiful environmental-looking pieces. But it was just sort of to develop an artistic relationship with nature … Whatever that might be.

MC: So did you develop a daily routine?

CP: Yeah. When we first got there, our professor told us that we had to collect one object, take one picture and draw one drawing every day. So that sort of developed a routine, which was nice, forcing us to be with nature. I don’t think people did it every day, but we tried to and so it was established as something we had to do. That’s actually what our final project is [which is due later this week]. It’s like a calendar project and we have to incorporate all of those items — the objects we collected, the pictures we took and the drawings we did. We don’t have to use them all but we’re supposed to incorporate them somehow.

MC: What were some of your favorite projects that you worked on?

CP: Hmm … I’d have to say … what was my favorite project? That’s difficult …

MC: Well, just some of them, then. Let’s start with that.

CP: Okay. There was one that, for the most part, I went a bit anti-nature for, or I didn’t use nature in the way that I normally would. Usually, when I draw, I draw very realistic things and I wanted to explore my creativity more. One of the projects I did was the antler penises. And that was a collaborative project with another girl on the trip. I don’t know how that came about, really. I was working and I had this neon green string and I was making them into little hats. I was going to make these antlers that we found on the ranch into little people that were sledding down a hill ... I was in a strange mood. And they just started looking like phallic things. So my partner and I made these really cool belts out of tree branches and pine and sage. So that part was really natural and intricate and beautiful and then the tips was just this neon green string. And so it was like these beautiful, ornate strap-ons that we put on trees. It was a bit funny ...

MC: What did you do with all the projects? You mentioned you put these strap-ons on trees. So did you put everything back into the land?

CP: That was actually a cool thing. Some people used wire to attach things and other man-made materials, so there was this divide between the kids who had to go pick up their projects and those who could just let theirs melt into the land. So that was interesting. I had one that could just melt into the land, which I liked. It was made of hay and I had made it into little diamonds. And I came back a couple days later, and then a couple days after that, just to see how it changed.

MC: Since you weren’t used to working with the landscape as much, did you work with any more-than-unusual materials that you weren’t used to?

CP: Yeah. Well, when I first got to the ranch, there was a lot of elk poop around. And for some reason, from the beginning, I wanted to work with it. Partly because there was so much of it, and also just because it’s sort of taboo. So I made them into mud sculptures and then I wound pieces of toilet paper around these six different shapes in the field and then it had this billowing string of toilet paper going through it. The wind would take it and make it dance.

MC: How do you think the month changed you as an artist?

CP: Well, I think it strengthened my desire to be an artist. I’m always questioning it and this was my first chance to have a sort of ‘artist-in-residence’ experience, and working off of other artists and learning from them, and I really loved it. So yeah, it strengthened my desire to pursue my art.

MC: Do you see the land in a new way now?

CP: Particularly that land. But it’s definitely opened up my eyes to what I can do with the land. Now I see little objects on the land and I think, ‘Oh, I could make those into a sculpture, or if I had enough, I could form them into a spiral.’ So it’s really cool.