A Piece of Sky
Los Angeles Cal USA 2001
Medium :- Website and Automobile Ornaments .
Dimensions :- Various.
A Piece of Sky is an artwork intended to engage the diverse communities of Los Angeles in a city-wide dialogue about the creative process and individual expression. Encompassing the whole of the city-its freeways, streets, homes, shops and parking lots-the artwork will act as a frame through which to focus the creative thoughts of Angeleños and to foster a greater sense of shared community.
A Piece of Sky begins as an exploration of the ways in which Angeleños achieve personal expression through ornamentation of their automobiles, through dashboard and rear-view mirror treatments/accoutrements such as fuzzy dice, St. Christopher medallions and doggie-dolls with bobbing heads, as well as hood ornaments and antenna balls. Such seemingly trivial totems and icons can be imbued with great personal significance in this city where so much of peoples' interaction is mediated by the experience of being isolated in individual automobiles. Collectively, these kinds of objects form a sort of symbolic language that helps Angeleños identify themselves to one another.
At first glance, such totems and icons may sometime seem to be merely decorative, yet they can be imbued with great person a significance, in this city where so much of peoples' interaction is mediated by the experience of being isolated in individual automobiles, or isolated by the great physical and psychological distances imposed by the scale of the city. Collectively, these kinds of objects form a sort of symbolic language that helps Angeleños identify themselves to one another.
In this exploration, the artist Nicola Atkinson.Davidson travelled all over the city in November 2000 researching people's ideas and applications of personalized automobile ornamentation. In a representative selection of city areas including Northridge, Venice, Watts, East Los Angeles, Hollywood, Encino, Chinatown, Korea town, Silverlake, San Pedro and Sylmar, she found that about roughly 40% of the population hangs decorative or symbolic objects on their rear-view mirrors (based on a statistical survey of over 300 cars in parking lots; see accompanying photo documentation). Most ornaments are quite small but each one is unique, and each has personal and special reasons for being displayed with pride. Items observed include a child's first shoes, a crucifix, a CD of the Koran, a rose, a small stuffed dolphin, shell beads, a baby Buddha, a miniature cowboy hat, a string of pearls a pine cone, a floral lei, and many others. The mixture of totems observed is surprising in that it is both eclectic -- out of hundreds observed, no two have been alike -- yet nonetheless unified through the common motivation of self-expression. Both the crucifix in Boyle Heights and the shell-bead necklace in Encino, for example, serve to highlight the individual's self identity, while at the same time serving a spiritual purpose (more or less explicitly).
Intriguingly, Atkinson.Davidson has found that while there is a common perception that people are increasingly self-identifying with corporate symbols such as the Nike "swish" logo, the existence of so many personal totems on display in automobiles suggests that this perception may be exaggerated -- that indeed we all feel a deep need to be considered as individuals, to share an individualized expression of ourselves to the rest of the world. Seeking to further explore the nature of this citywide matrix of colloquial symbols, A PIECE OF SKY provides a new avenue for Angeleños to express themselves artistically, both individually and as a community. It is in essence a celebration of the ways that people express their personal identities in the context of an increasingly diverse community -- a community that increasingly accepts and even sometimes favours symbols of "mass" corporate sensibility.
Functionally, the artwork involves the production and widespread distribution of artistic "sky ornaments" which can be displayed dangling from the rear-view mirror in the car, in a kitchen window, a workplace, storefront, on the handbag of a person riding Metro Rail or the bus‚ or even on a scooter. The sky ornaments will be produced in nine varieties, each reflecting a different character of the Los Angeles sky. Dawn, Morning, Midday, Day, Afternoon, Sunset, Night, Midnight and Early Hours.
Atkinson.Davidson anticipates that while the piece
will provide an initial framework for Angeleños to acknowledge
their interconnections in a new, creative way, it will ultimately
become a living process, a grassroots "movement," continually
reformed and expanded by its participants as they spread and mutate
its "messages" of linkage and inclusion among their respective
communities.
Sponsors :- The
Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs
