Aleathia says:
In 2007 I went to San Francisco to do a poetry reading and stayed with my friend MK. During that trip we went to the MOMA to see the Joseph Cornell exhibit, but what interested me more was a series of installations in a gallery showing called "Take Your Time" by Olafur Eliasson.
I had never been to a museum in a big city and had never experienced the power of large installations. I was intrigued by the sheer mass of them. They were full of angles and light and textures. Intricate and simple at the same time.
"One Way Color Tunnel"
"Beauty"
This installation was called "Beauty". It was like walking through a misting rain forest on a great spongy jungle floor. You were invited to walk through it or stand by and admire it. It touched me so much I wrote a poem about it.
Beauty
for MK
Water falls smoothly like silk hair of a beast,
flowing.
Fresnel lamp raises fractal prisms
in walled mist, the distant hum
coming from the blackness.
You move through,
face glistening unaffected
by hidden eyes devouring you,
distorting the water with the curves
of your body; turning our perceptions
into silence wrapped moments.
Touching without touching,
you find the answers we have all searched for,
though never found, now quietly parceled
in one tiny ray of light
on the bridge of your nose.
Aleathia Drehmer 2008
"Moss Wall"
This piece was most impressive. With the man standing there you can understand the scale. It was tucked between two white walls all by itself. The smell of dried moss was cloying and comfortable at the same time. This installation also inspired me to write a poem.
Shipwrecked
It is a wall
of honeyed trees;
the aerial
view, density personified,
engulfing and
pushing
the girl
simultaneously.
Her body
pulled inward
by the smell
of it,
something akin
to seaside,
and hay in
mid-day heat.
Its branches a
delicate coral,
an
entanglement of water removed
from the
primal habitat,
climbing walls
instead of creeping sand,
and she wants
to swim through it,
lie in it like
a simpleton
as if she
belonged there,
pretending for
only a few moments
that she is a
daughter of the ocean.
Aleathia
Drehmer 2008
The last noted exhibition was at the Tate Modern in London, England. If your local museum ever features Olafur Eliasson it would be worth the price of admission to go and see it. Here is a video about one of his installations called "Little Sun".
Olafur Eliasson's Little Sun
