"Art is something not necessarily measurable as lucrative. What is the value of a beautiful place or painting or experience. When you hear beautiful music what is it worth? Everybody leaves there – it’s a gift that’s not tangible. It’s a thing that you cant measure and I think for example the joy in an old persons heart when they have a genuine experience with someone or something that is so incredibly rich and valuable that we cant even begin to measure it", Peter Von Tiesenhausen, artist, interviewed for Dreamers and Doers.
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Q:
Inspiration from the land…your land is
your art - where does that come
from?
A: The land here is my teacher – as I started out as a landscape painter painting this land. I grew up here for 40 years observing it – as I have experienced, as I’ve been trying to paint it I have always been somehow – humbled by it. Whenever I’ve done a painting of the land its never come close to what the land is. I’ve never been able to express what I actually feel. Until recently – I went out and started to build these things on the land
– then
it started to have a conversation with me and I started to perceive that and
learn from it and grow as a result of it. When
you built something that was insensitve a snowfall would come and crush it.
Or it would just fall a part in an insensitive way – you would again be
humbled and have to deal with that issue. I
obviously didn’t see this material as I thought it was – or I didn’t have
the sensitivity or the sensibility to do it with respect to what I’m dealing
with. The land became my teacher
and I’ve learned that I have to respect if I’m to grow and survive and now
as I become more and more conscious of that on a bigger scale too – I realize
that what we do as a society to the land is appalling. I’m trying to
reduce my impact whenever I can. I
realize that I am part of that whole scenario too.
We don’t know how fortunate we are to have this incredible vastness of
landscape and clean air and water and space and spirit and to just bulldoze it
over and put our own pretentious marks on it is so shallow thinking its
unbelievable. I have realized that
over the last 15 years of being here. Its
so incredibly rich and all we are seeing is the money side.
For a tree like this – the big trees outside – those aspens get you
sixty cents – between sixty cents and a dollar is what the pulp mill will pay
for them. What is that tree worth
– its sixty to eighty years old –what is that tree worth to me?
Even laying on the ground dead? Its
unfathomable – its so rich and so beautiful and so full of spirit.
I mean we just don’t get that in our society. And there are countries all over the world that don’t have
this wealth of space that we have and they would give their eye teeth for this
and they would respect it a lot more that we do.
I originally placed
sculptures in the land that were statements about my ego – this is a thing
that I made. There was no
conversation going on of any kind and these things over time, as your fashion
changes as things change, you become aware that you are not part of it – you
are alienating yourself from it. When
I started to build these things – I could still satisfy my creative
needs – especially with the ice boats. That was these boats that I made out of
just lake ice in the lake. When
spring came they were gone, as it was they would only float and move within
their space for a day until they froze solid again.
So it would take you a month to build these things and in one day that
they would be free to move. Then
they would be solid again and in the spring there would be absolutely no trace
of them. Except the memories and
photos that were pretty crappy cause I took them.
I realized that those were the most sweet and poetic and sensitive things
that I could possibly make and I was still making – I was still satisfying my
creative need. For a whole winter I
made ice boats and it was pure poetry. What
did I have to show for it – absolutely nothing.
Two crappy photos – but it was worth it – cheap entertainment.