There was a feeling of ‘Lonely Beauty’ that struck me in the photo. I could see that everyone might not see it as a lonely scene; just some good companions out for a little exercise, but to me it was about longing and love. I looked at the photo a whole bunch of times on my I-phone and then picked up my shruti box and hit record.

My first impression of this song was “ I know this song, I know this man and I know what he is feeling very well.” He is lonely and waiting for his lover. The feeling that arose in me was one of knowing there is someone in this world for you but you have to wait for her. Wait all the days and all the nights no matter how long it takes. The image that came first, was of a man, me, standing in front of a window in an apartment I used live in, in Holland. I’d met a woman once while traveling in Canada. I fell in love with her though I knew her only a week. When I went back to Holland I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was the one! I found myself staring out of my window thinking of her as the days and nights passed by. We had no contact for 15 years and then one day, out of the blue, she called me and came over to visit me and on the second day she was there I asked her to marry me and she said yes. So, we knew each other for a week and two days and in between 15 years with nothing and I am the love of her life and she is mine our story gives me the understanding of this song so well. I listened once or two times to the song and then I stopped listening and started painting because I knew what I wanted to create: An older man looking at the horizon, Looking into a slice of night, looking into the day, seeing the stormy clouds going by lonely but trusting that his loved one would return. I wanted to express some loneliness in the painting but not a bad or scary or frightening loneliness. His back is to the observer because you don’t need to know him other than that he’s an older man, but you can tell by his posture and that he has spent quite a long part of his life waiting. You can look over his shoulder to see what he’s seeing; you’re not distracted by his face. When I did the painting I did it really fast with an empty head and a heart full of the emotion.

The music reminded me of a father telling his son honestly about his life. About a love he’d had and lost and warning his son not to run away from love. The lyrics felt sad and nostalgic but the tone of the singer’s voice and the vibration of the music left me feeling nurtured, comforted and completely reassured. My dance came from those feelings of comfort and reassurance. I imagined a sailor on the opened sea. I felt the nostalgia and sadness he might endure for a love that is far away and awaiting his return. I imagined the vulnerability he must feel under the vastness of the sky and over the whale-like motions of the sea. But within that vast opened exposure I imagined his complete calmness. I looped the music and just went with it. People started gathering around me. They stood on the balconies and on the outskirts in that giant space but I didn’t even notice them because I was completely filled with the music.

This perfume contains Black Agar.

Within minutes of seeing the dance I had a strange identification with the concrete floor on which the human gyroscope traveled. I imagined the pathways which might be made in a softer floor. I felt extreme contrast between the meandering path of the human hoola-hoop through the severe rigidity of the industrial site. I could smell the musty concrete with the counterpoint of the sweat of the gyroscope man. The piece I produced is a direct response to thinking about the tracks which the human propelled hoop device made on the floor it rolled on. My response is an earthcasting where I rolled a round device onto prepared North Carolina mud. The piece is sort of like being the floor in the industrial space having received the track of the acrobatic wheel in the video. I then let the mud dry creating the serendipitous forms of cracks as the moisture leaves the mud. The piece is about the artifice of “human-made”, of art, versus the organic occurrences of “nature-made”.

I thought about how to present pieces that all seemed to me to be revealing both the vulnerability of being alone and the inherent strength in that very same thing. I ultimately utilized heavy vertical beams that sit in steel brackets to hang each piece from.

The other strong element is the steel strapping that literally ties all the verticals together into the arc. All the materials will degrade, age and richen in color over time.