Artist Statement
I began this project with nothing in mind. I waited to see what the land wanted when I met it. During our tour on day one, our hostess Shannon mentioned the walls of clay along the stream. Suddenly, my longtime desire to experiment with cob construction popped into my head.
It was late March, and the land was more visible and the stream accessible in numerous locations. The lack of leaves on many of the trees offered an openness, with views that slowly and yet quickly faded and morphed. Narrow trails disappeared. Delicate trillium flowers arose and disappeared. The land changed so much as spring budded, and with it my ideas morphed and swirled.
I presented my idea of something made with cob construction, potentially a cord-wood structure, and Shannon generously agreed. She pointed me to giant stash of branches and wood from fallen and trimmed trees. The kind of pile that comes with managing natural land. While going through the branches, stumps, and old cord-wood, I found two large branches, they looked regal, like the hand rests for a throne. Made for a true king, one that saw nature for the power and wonder it is. A throne for nature itself. Then it came to me, a throne for nature, a Nature Throne!
Now eagerly, I began gathering pieces and figuring out how to fit them together to build this chair of distinction. I became disillusioned many times. I yelled at myself for being so ambitious with this project, for “biting off more than I could chew”. I wanted to cry a few times. I rebuilt the entire seat, reinforced the frame. I took it apart half a dozen times before it got fully put together. I called in the help of a few friends and mentors for advice, Jim Stewart from the Zymoglyphic Museum and Bruce Conkle offered a great deal of advice and assistance in the creation of the Nature Throne.
Even with all the strife of its creation, even with my fear this rainy Summer Solstice, with more rain predicted tomorrow, with the concrete barely set. On the day of it’s unveiling, will it even be standing when I arrive? I don’t know.
Please rain don’t wash away the Nature Throne. No matter, the realizations I had and the labor I put in to finish it for this date was so enriching, so invigorating and defining, it made me feel ready for anything and everything! It brought me further onto my soul’s path, there is no turning back now.
I know no matter what happens after June 21st, 2025, I honored the beauty and majesty of nature the best I could at this moment in time with this creation, Nature Throne!
In addition to the the wood and branches from the land, I used a piece of wood from The Cold Stream, a famed fishing boat owned by renowned poet and fisherman Dave Densmore in Astoria Oregon. I felt it offered the power of words to all who sit upon it. Within its structure is bark and pieces from a tree that fell in a storm in Lents Park, it was a Southern Magnolia and there is also a rock from under that tree.
On the sides is bark from a Red Cedar in Mt Tabor dog park. The tree called to me when I first moved to Portland in 2017. It was my first tree friend, they told me many important things over the years, until it was cut down along with a number others last year. I carried those pieces of bark for more than a mile with my dog. I didn’t know what I would do with them but I knew they would be part of something important.
Also included is a rock from Mt Tabor Park, a rock from Chinook Landing on the Columbia River, a rock from the Sandy River Delta, a rock from Beaver Creek, water from Beaver Creek, a piece of wood from an old barn in eastern Oregon, and a piece of Obsidian from another Verdancy Project resident artist to honor all those artists who have been here before me and left addition creation of beauty or their positive energy behind.
May this Nature Throne stand for years as a testament to the beauty of The Verdancy Project land, and the majesty of the world around us!
Amy Stocky
6/20/255