Field Doll extends my artistic preoccupation with how we relate to place as manifested by the previous large-scale, sculptural installations I have completed. Cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan writes that “place can acquire deep meaning for the adult through the steady accretion of sentiment over the years” (33). Tuan goes on to say that this sentiment for place accrues not necessarily through grand happenings but through small, almost nameless intimate experiences (143). Just as humble unspoken moments render places intimate, so do quotidian objects, like, for example a child’s doll. We do not typically pay attention to such items the way we would objects d’art; rather, they become part of the fabric of our lives, too close to be noticed (146). However, as Tuan writes, if contemplated, we feel for these ordinary objects what a thing of beauty makes us feel – as though we are in the midst of an independent presence (Tuan 144).
As children we relate to objects with a directness unshackled from the protective cynicism of adulthood; we seek security, but remain open to the world (137). Tuan suggests that this openness grants children the capacity to know the world “more sensuously” than adults, adding that this lost childhood gift of receptivity “is one reason why the adult cannot go home again” (185). Because of the enormity of the doll, adults will be forced to reckon with this typically overlooked object and be given the opportunity to reconnect with the immediate sensations of their past childhoods, engendering, if fleetingly, a closer or more intimate connection to place. When the doll is situated and documented in the landscape, the doll becomes a focal point, lending the surrounding environs greater clarity. In either scenario, Field Doll works to reconnect viewers to place.
– Heather & Sheri Benning
Works Cited: Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1977.
