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"Mound for Viewing Slope and Sky"

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Mound from Faculty Road.jpg
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Seen from Faculty Road, the function of the work was ambiguous. Walking around and on top of the sculpture was a different story. The mound at the front, was 5 feet high and most adults could look across the top and see the wooden framework that had been set into it. They could find the steps at one end and climb to the top. On the other hand, people walking around the back looked up a grassy bank some 12 feet high. The top was invisible. These changes were dramatic. Even more dramatic was climbing to the top of the mound and looking at the sloping lawn around it. "I remembered working on the Princeton mound into the last hours of autumn light and just before the sun went down, the whole surface where I stood seemed to take off like a magic carpet and lift into space. Strangely, there in my own work born of formal solutions and geometric premises, I had discovered a field for communing with nature, as people used to say, and it was an unexpected revelation." (excerpt from Issue 2: A Journal for Artists, winter 1985) This sense of floating was something I encountered while working on the perspective drawing some years later.

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Faculty Road Princeton University, NJ  1982–1990

12’ x 90’ x 45'  wood, earth, stone

Photos: Lisa Nanni

(1983)  36" x 69"  perspective drawing by the artist  rapidograph pen, ink, graphite pencil

Copyright by Alice Adams 2018

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