DREAMS IN THE SEA-WITCH HOUSE BOAT / PROJECT STATEMENT
2010. Site-specific installation. Far Rockaway, Brooklyn.
Curated by Jess Shaefer of Hendershot Gallery/Creative Time for “Shake Outttt 3: The Sea Giveth, The Sea Taketh Away.”
This installation presents an uncanny, imagined mythology of the northern Atlantic Ocean. The piece is created using a vintage 1960’s houseboat as the installation space. The large-format documentation of the space act as an archive of the boat’s ephemeral existence, and are works of art in their own regard.
The boat was transformed to become the imagined mythological home of the Sea-Witch; inside, viewers are met with her collection of bones, seaweed, branches, shells, lichen, hides, and various domestic antiquities. Her sun-bleached color palette is tinged with darker hues of dried marine life (such as the piles of seaweed overflowing from her bedroom drawers). As the wind and boaters’ wakes moves the water surrounding it, the moored houseboat gently rocks to and fro; the subtle sound of bones and chains chiming together provide some of the eeriest moments on the boat for visitors. Other memorable sensory experiences are evoked from the briny smells of the harbor and of the marine carcasses hung about the cabin.
The boat was docked at Marina 59 in Far Rockaway, Brooklyn, an open to the public for a period of 24 hours.