Gathering [Boise River]
Gathering [Boise River]
- Creator: Ariana Martinez
- Date: 2025
- Location: Arts & History Work Room
- Types: found objects, sculpture (visual work), assemblages (sculpture)
- Materials: found objects, twine, wood (plant material)
- Collection: James Castle House Artist in Residence Works
The artwork literally weaves together organic matter, man-made refuse, and the material evidence of wildlife activity from within the Boise River. As a pair of sculptures constructed with basketry techniques, and that take their shapes from those of functional vessels, the work evokes the ancient and universally human activity of crafting ways to carry what is important, meaningful, or useful to us across space. The work is an embodiment of the connection I found to the Boise River and to the people of Boise who taught me about its unique ecology and showed me new, embodied, tactile, and material ways of engaging with it. The work is made up of two sculptures, each representing a different kind of interaction with the River's ecosystem. One work is made up of three cubic baskets, each designed with a slit in each of its four woven sides. Beaver-hewn wood chips (gifted by Boise-based artist, Ellis Locke) are pushed through the lits to link, or bridge the woven forms. A piece of orange, plastic construction fencing—evidence of man-made activity that disruptions the constructions and creative acts of other river animals, is sewn into one side of the third basket in the construction. The fencing does not bridge to another form, but juts out into empty space, signifying a break or rupture in a harmonious system. The second sculpture is comprised of a long, narrow, and shallow woven form that looks like a kind of bracket: one long side flanked by two curving appendages. A piece of driftwood is pressure-fit (using no glue, adhesive, or hardware) into these woven sockets, creating an oblong loop of woven fiber and found wood. The long side of the woven form is open across the top and houses three black Basalt stones of different shapes and sizes. A bent and broken lawn treatment flag, green plastic affixed to steel wire, found in the Boise river is sewn into the side of the woven form. Altogether, the construction resembles a kind of makeshift boat with a wind-torn sail. I worked on this sculpture intermittently, on site, during daily trips along the Boise River Greenway by bicycle. The looping form of the sculpture takes its shape from the point in the Greenway where it splits to encircle a pond, with the River on one side. This work functions as a tactile representation of what it feels like to move through a space where naturally occurring and man-made infrastructure are entangled.
