BIG IDEA Project: The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit
What is the 21st-century experience of the spiritual in nature? How do we understand our own personal relationship with the natural world? What lessons does the Transcendentalism movement of the mid-19th century offer us today? The Sun Valley Center for the Arts will explore these questions and more in its new BIG IDEA project, The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit, opening Friday, Jan. 17, 2020, at its museum in Ketchum.
The mid-19th century in the United States saw the emergence of a group of progressive thinkers who advocated for a new understanding of the relationship between the individual, the divine and the natural world. Men and women including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, among others, came together in a shared belief in a variety of [umanitarian causes (women’s suffrage, better conditions for workers, abolition, progressive education) but also religious purpose. Transcendentalism, as their theological and philosophical ideas became known, advocated for a personal knowledge of God founded upon a rejection of materialism in favor of a spiritual experience of nature. Transcendentalism’s ideals found their most famous embodiment in Thoreau’s retreat to Walden Pond (then believed to be bottomless), where he spent a year living in relative isolation in a small, spare cabin, focusing on the spiritual rewards of a life lived in harmony with nature.
“At this technology-saturated moment, when creating time to pause, breathe, and just be in awe of the world is increasingly difficult, it seems appropriate to look again at the approach of the Transcendentalists, who advocated a retreat from the material world in favor of a divine encounter with nature,” said Kristin Poole, Artistic Director at The Center. “Re-examining their ideas may encourage us to take that pause—to stop and look and, perhaps along the way, find that a deep breath on a crisp Idaho day fills more than just our lungs.”
The visual arts exhibition associated with The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit features the work of six contemporary artists who explore themes central to the BIG IDEA:
- Richard Barnes has long been interested in the role photography plays in documenting criminal evidence. The exhibition includes four photographs Barnes made of the cabin once inhabited by Ted Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber), now kept in an FBI storage locker. Kaczynski built the cabin himself after deciding to try to live self-sufficiently in Montana, modeling the cabin on Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. The photographs are testimony to the continued relevance of Thoreau’s rejection of materialism—and to Kaczynski’s extreme interpretation of that idea.
- Lesley Dill makes sculptures and collages that create relationships between language and the human body. Working with materials including wire, fabric, muslin, newspaper and glass, Dill invites viewers to consider the meaning of the words, phrases and stanzas she incorporates into her artwork. Her works in the exhibition include fragments of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, a poet affiliated with the Transcendentalists whose work has long been a source of inspiration to Dill. The exhibition also includes a piece inspired by novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, like Dickinson, worked at the margins of Transcendentalism, initially embracing its ideas before ultimately rejecting its utopian idealism.
- Spencer Finch’s work asks viewers to think about the relationship between memory and our perception of nature, particularly our changing experience of light and color in the natural world. The exhibition includes Walden (surface/depth), which Finch created after learning about Thoreau’s 1846 survey of Walden Pond. Finch received permission to perform that survey again, this time using a rope combined with an electronic depth meter and making watercolor swatches matching the surface of the water at each of approximately 700 soundings.
- William Lamson’s film In the Roaring Garden was commissioned in 2014 by the deCordova Museum in Concord, Massachusetts. Lamson created a floating camera obscura inside a 1:5 scale model of Thoreau’s cabin, recording a video of the landscape as it passed along the walls of the cabin. Images of trees, clouds and sunlight reflected on water appear, changing in relationship to the movement of the model cabin as it floated around the pond. The exhibition also includes photographs of Lamson’s Solarium, a structure modeled on Thoreau’s cabin, with each pane made from sugar cooked to different temperatures and sandwiched between panes of glass.
- Jane Marsching creates interdisciplinary and collaborative artwork that explores our past, present and future relationship to the natural environment. The exhibition includes Ice Out at Walden, a series of five prints inspired by Thoreau’s observations of nature at Walden, including his annual notation of the day the lake’s winter ice cover disappeared each year between 1845 and 1853. Marsching’s prints visualize data related to the changing climate, using marks to pair Thoreau’s notes in his 1847 weather almanac with measurements collected from a contemporary Concord weather station.
- Claire Sherman is known for her large-scale paintings that envelop viewers in the natural world, placing them in tangles of dense tree branches or vines, for example, or just inside the mouths of caves with views to the night sky. Her dynamic and richly painted images celebrate nature as a place imbued with a kind of animated spirituality—a place where one can get lost and escape the material world. The exhibition includes two large paintings and a selection of smaller works on paper, each conveying a view of the natural world that verges on the mystical.
The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit exhibition also includes hands-on activities for learners of all ages in The Center’s Maker Space.
To further illuminate this BIG IDEA, The Center will present a series of lectures, classes, films and theatre productions to encourage community participation and discussion:
FREE Museum Exhibition Jan. 17–March 11
Film: The World Before Your Feet Jan. 16, 4:30 and 7 p.m.
Class: A Winter Walk with Matt Green Jan. 18, 10 a.m.
Creative Jump-In: “On Being Thoreau” with Tim Price Jan. 22, 29, Feb. 5 & 12, 6–7:30 p.m.
Creative Jump-In: “Diving Deep Into Winter Blues: Healing Through Nature” With Cal Millar Jan. 23, 6–8:30 p.m.
FREE Theatre Reading: “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail” by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee Jan. 23, 7 p.m.
Teen Workshop: Landscape Photography With a Twist Jan. 25, 9 a.m.–noon
FREE Family Day: Nature Play Jan. 25, 11–4 p.m.
Performing Arts: Taimane – “Elemental” Tour, Jan. 26, 7:30 p.m.
Featured Speaker: An Evening With Cheryl Strayed Jan. 30, 6:30 p.m. (Presented in partnership with The Community Library)
FREE Theatre Reading: “Tiny Beautiful Things” by Cheryl Strayed Feb. 1, 7 p.m. and Feb. 2, 3 p.m.
Creative Jump-In: “Finding the Transcendental in Still Life Painting” With Sarah Bird Feb. 10–14, 9 a.m.–1 p.m.
FREE Evening Exhibition Tour Feb. 13, 5:30 p.m.
FREE Gallery Walk Feb. 14, 5–7 p.m.
FREE Evening Exhibition Tour March 5, 5:30 p.m.
Film: Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, March 5, 4:30 and 7 p.m.
Self-Care Workshop: Green Studio With Jordyn Dooley March 7, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. (Offered in partnership with Sawtooth Botanical Garden)
The visual arts exhibition for The Bottomlessness of a Pond: Transcendentalism, Nature and Spirit will be on view at The Center in Ketchum through March 11, 2020. Admission to the museum is always free, and the public is invited to visit the exhibition during The Center’s open hours, Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.