Hudson Valley Ghost Column 6, Terrain
at The Fullerton Cultural Center, Newburgh, NY for Terrain Bienniel
2019
Historic Hudson Valley-made Lahey bricks and unprocessed Cormo sheep wool from a Hudson Valley fiber farm
76” high, 32” diameter
2019
The Hudson Valley Ghost Columns are a series of site- responsive sculptures built at sites around New York state from materials important to the Hudson Valley region’s geological, social, and material history. Each column is dry-stacked on site and structured in response to its context.
The Lahey Bricks used in Ghost Column 6 were salvaged from a derelict property in Newburgh in 2016, and were produced at William Lahey’s brickyards in New Windsor or Fishkill Landing (Beacon) between 1879 and 1909. This site at the Fullerton Center was chosen for its proximity to the immense ornamental European Copper Beech tree, which is rumored to be the oldest tree in Newburgh.
As artifact in and of the Hudson Valley and Newburgh landscape, Ghost Column 6 recalls 19th-century romantic visions of nature and an idealized representation of the human place in the natural world, as depicted in Thomas Cole’s Hudson River School paintings, found in Alexander Jackson Downing’s philosophy of landscape design, and voiced in Thomas Campbell’s poem, “The Beech Tree’s Petition.” However, the Ghost Columns seek to both reference and complicate this history by conjuring a form both familiar and strange. As both material trace and construction, the columns allow the materials to act as agents, interpreting each other and their context. The materials and form weave together multiple histories, becoming something other—a contingent form evoking architecture, animal, and body simultaneously.