Becky Evans’ and Lori Goodman’s large-scale installation PLAY
It all started with two 4-by-4-by-4-foot boxes of wood wool — great piles of curly, hay-like wood shavings — marked “FREE” outside Miller Farms Garden Center. Artist Becky Evans saw the boxes and thought her friend and fellow artist Lori Goodman might want to use the material in her paper-making practice. Eventually, they transformed the material into PLAY, a color drenched, provocatively tactile, immersive installation in Goodman’s Eureka barn. When Goodman initially saw the volume of material Evans had secured for her, she told Evans it was too much, telling her, “Take it back!” Instead of going back to the garden center, however, the wood wool sat in Goodman’s barn for about a year. Then one day, on a whim, Goodman began coloring the wood wool with the dyes she was using for her paper. She discovered the shredded wood fiber, also known as excelsior — a biodegradable packing material, often used in pet bedding and gift baskets — took the dyes exceptionally well. Over the course of some months, with Evans’ help, the boxes of discarded packing material became mounds of curly, vivid, color-stuff. Evans’ and Goodman’s original plan for the stuff was to make some kind of sculptural installation in a field. During the dying process, however, they brought some of the colored wood wool into the barn to dry and realized they had already created a huge installation on the floor. They began to play. Their artistic play was intuitive, spontaneous and free from deadlines. “If it wasn’t fun,” Evans says, “It wasn’t something we wanted to do.” The artists experimented with crafting bundles, and with developing visual contrasts and counterpoints, moving the material around. The whole process, they say, was based on “discovery.” Ultimately, they learned the excelsior lent itself to being hung on the walls with finishing nails. Over time, Evans and Goodman covered the four walls of the barn, edge to edge, from overhead down to the ground. The installation, which opened to public viewing during Open Studios, demands to be touched and offers sensory contradictions. Its material looks fluffy but feels rough. It appears as though it might be dangerous, possessing some visual qualities of fiberglass and asbestos, but is in fact entirely safe and earth-friendly. Colors blend to form gradients around the four structural surfaces, leading to a rich, dark, purple and black field along the back wall. The installation calls to…