Free Art
Free art was mounted as a one-person installation in the non-profit Arts Iowa City Gallery. It was set up as a living room with references to the war in Iraq used as decorative elements. This living room area was separated from the gallery entrance area by a wall of bars whose caged entryway was guarded by a closed circuit surveillance camera. Depending upon which side of the wall the viewer stood on, the wall took on either the aspect of a cage, keeping the contents inside, or a security barrier, protecting the contents and occupants. The ambiguity of this wall set up the purposeful ambivalence of this exhibit.
The viewer enters the "living room," defined by a couch and a round coffee table after walking past a side-table with NATO standard ammunitions presented on velvet, and a coffin-sized bench covered with an American Flag. On the coffee table are shards of broken glass. Three video monitors are in the corner. The top video shows the process of the glass breaking on the table, the sound of the glass breaking forming an additional cadence. The middle video, shot from a high angle that references a surveillance camera position, shows a person creating a circle on the floor by repeatedly walking through a pile of flour. The formal element of the circle in the video reflects and reinforces the physical environment of the room and the viewer's movement through it. In the bottom video, over the course of a five-minute loop, a drip slowly forms at the end of a wire, and drops. The sound of a steady heartbeat accompanies the formation of the drip and stops when the drip falls.