Black Fences

Late summer of 1988 I was driving across route 33 through Orange County, just north of Charlottesville.  Something about the rolling farmland bordered by miles of black fence, bits of it lined with wildflowers,  I remember thinking, “ I could live here.”  

Thirty-six years later, I’ve definitely lived here.  City, County, Louisa County, now County again.   Sharon and I have piece of land that rolls, part open, part wooded and it is bordered in part, with black fence panels.  Pretty as they are, I’ve never been fan of fences, regardless of what type or where I lived.  They separate, confine and define.  They can be complicated, and you have to weed whack them, constantly.  And paint, too.

And so it was in doing this chore, the whirlybird one I don’t love, that I began noticing the life about these boards.  North-facing ones hold a collage of lichen, south-facing facing faded and strained.  The fallen have been nearly devoured by the earth.  My favorite is a particular strand where a rare moss straddles the top edge, having just the right temper meant of humidity and shade, their tiny tops dotted lipstick red. 

Having inherited a healthy inventory of boards lying in and about the barn, I began to notice their different textures reminded me of that of humans.  I had been experimenting with linear forms of silhouettes, so carving the fence panels was a natural progression. This past March,  I created an installation in a hayfield, Willowers, consisting of 24 boards of form in 17 wildflower beds.  I chose the sturdiest for the leaders, weathered for the well-lived, and other boards seem to speak for themselves.   

And of those boards I pulled from the dirt?  These are treasures. These boards have damn near seen it all. After I scrape away the eroded, the embedded, to find grooves, swirls, and nooks detailing their own process of giving up and giving back, I am left with something sculptural to me.  I give them a fresh coat of black fence paint and now I have something I love, almost as much as I love painting sunflowers.

 Flowers grow near fences. 

Black Fences