Anna Craycroft

 

In this photo I am mustering the last of my pick-axing strength to dig a trench around my sculpture. The piece was originally designed for Socrates Sculpture Park, where it sat on the bank of the East River across from Roosevelt Island's Blackwell Lighthouse. In that setting, it was a monument to the lighthouse, the excess of its Victorian Gothic design, and the colorful history of 19th-century Queens. Fortunately the move to P.S. 1 was not so far in geography or history, but the piece lost its direct relationship to that watery landscape. Somehow, the absurdity of moving this massive object in a blistering snowstorm reminded me of Casper David Freidrich's painting Sea of Ice. So when we tore up its original brick platform, I dug a trench in the ground and wedged the rubble into it. Now the piece stands aloft on its own little island, or perhaps emerges through the ground beneath.