Possum Pouch

Vicuña Notes

The following notes were made Tuesday March 2, 2004, outside the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, Austin. Poet and visual artist Cecilia Vicuña handed out yarn, draped it around things and dropped it into Waller Creek. Here's a relation of the event, a Creek Call, as I find it today in my notebook.

Cecilia Vicuña is wrapping yarn over the metal bars of a narrow footbridge overlooking Waller Creek. Red, purple, orange and yellow balls have been intertwined through a group of students, plants and rocks. She released a moment ago several balls of yellow and red into the quick-moving water, quick-moving because of today's heavy rain. New green shoots pop out of willow limbs and cypress branches reach out above us. There are styrofoam cups, broken plastic and scrap paper tangled into the haw and coralberry above these limestone crags. Now she unspools more red and purple balls and the current drags out the strings from the uppermost points of the bridge, dragging out and tangling in the water's swift rushing. There's ball moss in the cypress branches. Balls of string in her hands. I like her shoes, some dark, sporty sneakers. Now I've joined Susan Briante and we're both taking notes in the creek bed. Cecilia connects us to the others by giving us a point to hold in the taut unwinding of purple thread. Purplum—a royal color here in the bottom of an urban drain-off. The juice from our cars washes through here under ground to the Edward's Aquifer. Now a woman in no way involved with this "art" jumps over the purple and red hurtles woven across the footbridge above us. Cecilia chants. People snap pictures or, like me, write.

*

String dangles from the bridge as Cecilia chants. What is she saying, and who's it to? A branch against the current catches a plastic bottle. We're sitting on limestone and fallen cypress leaves that have turned a kind of red bronze by decay. Her socks are purple with black stripes. Rust-colored corduroy pants. We're all just sitting around here, solemn but casual too. It's not my thing. Too communal. I like art in the grit of my cell. I can hear busses motoring behind us by the museum. A wad of orange yarn floats serenely away. Now she's unwinding us. A girl's blue hair is tangled in purple thread. A young black guy's got a piece right through his afro. An Asian woman gathers a bunch of it and tosses it in. Our butts are wet from sitting on these soaked embankments. White foam bubbles off on the green-grey surface. Cecilia smiles, motioning with her hands. These rites are over with the sound of applause. Voices, stone and water absorb our clapping. Above us people go about their business. There are windows rectangular in a building to our north. It's slippery down here, as it should be I guess. People are leaving.

(2 III 04)

Posted by Dale at March 4, 2004 07:58 PM