Awesome Artist

Bill Hess; This is a clock face made from recycled glass.

Bill Hess; Water Bottles with Specimens; cast glass; 2000
This piece was made from Evian bottles that were casted, then leaves, cedar cones, seaweed, sticks were placed inside.

Bill Hess; Gear and Flower Opposition; cast bronze with patina; 2000

Bill Hess; Nature?; welded steel, found objects, tree branch; 1999

Bill Hess; Strawbale Sinewave; 2005

Bill Hess; Tree-Cycle; plastic soda bottles, wire; 2005

Bill Hess is a glass/metal artist in Nelson County (where I grew up). His work often involves correlations between man-made stuff and nature. He makes a lot of his pieces using recycled glass and found metal parts. Some of his metal sculptures deal with nature themes, or resorting back to nature. All pieces he creates are environmentally aware, such that he sends messages to recycle and reuse, and cleans up waste materials by making art.
He also holds workshops for students, artists, and community members to make earth art! He encourages people to work without tools and only found materials in an outside setting.

Here are some of his links:

http://www.nelsoncountylife.com/2007/11/05/datebook-afton-local-artist-bill-hess-showings-in-nov-dec/

http://home.earthlink.net/~ideas_onlegs/

garden space

This is a space behind the Visual Arts Center that is slowly but surely being transformed into a creative garden space. My friend (she's the one in the pic) and I are working to help start this garden space. The idea is for kids mainly to have a creative space to work, play, and get inspiration. It's not much yet, especially since its winter now, but in the spring it should be popping with all the bulbs we planted. This picture is what it first looked like when we started at the beginning of the semester. We found so much broken bottle glass and food wrappers. There were also piles of bricks that we recycled, some for the kilns that were fireproof and others for walkways.


As the lot is between the backyards of two houses on Floyd street, there were already some plants there, as well as a few "volunteer" plants. We worked with what we had at first. Later we got some good donations of bulbs and perennials, even a pomegranate tree!

So we planted some grass seed as well...it needed it.





I'm not sure that it's necessarily "earth art" as of now. But I do think it may move in that direction. Our boss found bamboo and made a trellis type structure. Also we tried to arrange the plants/trees in a way that invites people in and encourages an interactive space. We hope to use what we find (for example there was this old street lamp just sitting in the lot, and they plan to weld bars to it to make a fence structure to keep cars out) to make this space. There is some talk of installing a structure (maybe like a fort or tent or something!), but definitely we've started livening up the space with the birdhouse and picnic table. I think the process found in many works of earth art of choosing a space and letting it help guide the idea to end up with a piece that is both aesthetically interesting and naturally "beautiful", and that also fits in peacefully with the earth and brings community members together is a necessary and wonderful process.
The idea reminded me a little of the video Jake Galle showed in class of the Fallen Fruit artist collective project with the fruit trees, as well as The Omnivores Dilemma corn field. I'm really interested in ideas that bring people in the community together to create a common, productive and environmentally beneficial project. Although this garden project is not as cool as Mel Chins' Revival Field garden, we definitely did help clean up the space and get rid of a lot of garbage. The project was just started in September and already there are artists, welders, community members and members of the visual arts center, as well as neighbors all willing to help and contribute.

final piece...

I went home to Afton, Va for Thanksgiving. My mom just moved to a new house, and she hasn't quite adjusted to the neighbors yet...apparently they like to stand and stare sometimes over at the house to see whats going on and look at the potted plants. I thought it would be fun to make a fence-like structure using yarn, ribbon and fabric. Originally I planned on constructing it between the neighbors house and my moms, but the environment wasn't great and there were not enough trees for support. So I made the structure towards the front of the woods next to our house.
This is where I started.

progress

My dogs were helping when I was weaving the yarn.

yarn fence

This is the final piece. Luckily I got most of it done before it started raining. I went out the next morning to see if the rain had affected it, and everything seemed to hold up pretty well. I didn't take it down before I left, so it will be up for another two weeks. Maybe by then the wind will change it some.

I originally wanted to make this piece a commentary on funny neighbors and putting up a "nice" but visible fence-like structure. However, the process of making the yarn fence had a different effect on my idea. I was physically walking with the piece as I was wrapping the yarn around the trees and carrying it some distance to the next tree. I had to repeat this motion constantly, and it became a sort of meditation. At that point I did not want to keep thinking about creating a barrier between our house and the neighbors'; it felt too negative in a sense.
I feel the process was an important part of this piece. It took longer than I thought to wind and wrap the fabric and yarn. I also had to finagle my body a lot to work in between what I had already made. The act of making this piece sort of reminded me of Richard Long's pieces in that I was both forming and walking a line with the yarn. In Overlay, Lippard talks of the "impulse toward constant movement" as "one more confrontation of that tension, inherent in modern life and art, between the ephemeral and the permanent" (122). I feel this statement relates to my piece as the process involved movement by walking, while also it became an exploration and comparison of the permanent to the temporal. The yarn is an element that I added that is not permanent but only temporary proof of the process and what I created, whereas the trees that support the structure can be said to encompass the permanent.

cool tree on broad street

I saw this tree walking to class the other morning. Its right next to the bookstore on broad across from the art building. Someone (maybe from our class...? or an art student) duck taped different kinds of grass and tree limbs to the tree. Its pretty neat...