This site specific installation layers three concepts from prior work: the continuation of the idea of exploring the cyclical process of life, of the landscape as witness and storyteller, and the imagined language of shape. 

The work is a response to observing and spending time in the landscape at The Verdancy Project (TVP), noting the elements of nature, and how one is in conversation with the other, depicted through organic forms, gesture, and the layering of plant material, some of which were gathered on site, brought in from other locations, or inspired by places I have found interesting and meaningful. Logistically, I wanted to create a space larger than human scale, where the viewer can enter the piece and its surroundings, encouraging them to engage in the idea that we are but small elements in this vast world. 
 
Additionally, I thought it would be interesting to build on my previous site-specific installation, Listen - Gather – Reminisce, from Terra Incognita, a TVP Project, looking at the concept of the landscape as a witness and what a specific, and intentionally created site might become over time. With that, the landscape became a storyteller, and I imagined its language as shapes. 

The shapes, from the shape language I have developed, are the foundation of this piece. It is, however, a temporal foundation that is an opportunity to speak to time, inviting the ephemeral nature and its eventual disintegration and decay into the conversation. The planted beds will change shape as the plants grow. They will go dormant in the winter, emerge in the spring, come into full leaf and bloom in the summer, and start to recede back into dormancy in the transition into fall, to meet winter again.  
Earthwork No. 1 (drifting experiential habitation) land art installation by Barb Burwell
Earthwork No. 1 (drifting experiential habitation) land art installation by Barb Burwell
Earthwork No. 1 (drifting experiential habitation) details land art installation by Barb Burwell
floral bower installation Earthwork No. 1 (drifiting experiential habitation) by Barb Burwell
floral bower installation Earthwork No. 1 (drifting experiential habitation) by Barb Burwell
floral bower installation Earthwork No. 1 (drifiting experiential habitation) by Barb Burwell

Earthwork No. 1 (drifting experiential habitation)