For You, Beautiful
The concept of For You, Beautiful is to catalyze generosity in real time in people’s real lives. I invite attendees/participants to think of someone in their lives and to let that person know – this time in the form of a postcard stating "You may or may not know you have the most beautiful _________."
For You, Beautiful works as a narrative with three stages. First, you are participating right now, as you read this, calling to mind the distinct beauties of some of the people in your life. The next stage of the work is you writing or filling out an internet form to send a postcard. You may do so here. The work ends with the recipients of the gift receiving them – whenever and wherever that may happen.
for you
The proffered future.
[mason jars etched with "enjoy -> refill -> pass on"; homemade squash soup, dilly beans, bircher muesli, pickled beets, black bean & corn salsa and red cabbage slaw; live sound feed, 2009]
Visitors to the gallery were encouraged to leave with at least one jar.
Every atom belonging to me as sure belongs to you.
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as sure belongs to you.
– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
Another artwork in the vein of and inspired by Even the highest mind and most rarefied spirit exist in a body that is made of earth.
(click image to add layers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7)
[drawings; popcorn grown in the dirt from P.T. Barnum's grave; 10 to the 8th power molecules of an Edith Piaf song (as sung by Edith Piaf); candles made by bees in Concord, MA (in proximity to Ralph Waldo Emerson's grave) in hand-crafted, paper packaging; 2005-7]
Even the highest mind and most rarefied spirit exist in a body that is made of earth.
"Even the highest mind and most rarefied spirit exist in a body that is made of earth."
– Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene
People lived on Earth for millenia before we were born and, grand or humble, left marks that influence our lives today. We owe our technology, our beliefs, our customs – our very bodies – to their lives, their work, their joys and suffering. Even the highest mind... is an homage to all who came before us and left behind wisdom that nourishes and teaches us; from this wisdom our own takes root and grows, for us and for those who come later.
[dirt gathered from a tiny number of the dead to whom my work pays tribute; plants; glass; 2005]
≥ Hippasus of Metapontum
Hippasus of Metapontum was the disciple of Pythagoras to whom is attributed the discovery that √2 is an irrational number, thus proving the existence of irrational numbers. Pythagoras could not disprove the existence of irrational numbers through logic but his beliefs would not allow for them or the implication that all numbers are not ratios of integers and thus absolute. It is also said that after √2 was proven to be irrational the Pythagoreans threw Hippasus of Metapontum into the sea to his death.*