"TO BECOME...not knowing, not knowing, not knowing, not knowing this, not knowing that, let it be, adjust."

- Thomas Prinz. "Little Italy." Received by Mike Nesbit and Claire Dilworth, 27 September 2021.

20 November 2020: The first part of Dig is complete, the concrete has been planted. It will sit in the ground through the winter and grow from the melting snow. Harvest will come during the spring when we pull the 20-ton earth cast from the landscape it represents.

05 December 2020: An area of gray between sculpture and landscape, process and representation, ownership and meaning, scale and value.

14 December 2020: The first snowfall for ‘Dig’ and it appears that the four steel embeds that will be used to pull the 20-ton earth cast from the ground in spring have become a watering hole for the deer in Little Italy.

01 March 2021: A cut through the landscape, a generational process, about time, about the seasons, about patience, appreciate delayed gratification.

24 March 2021: Spring approaches as Dig prepares for harvest, a 20-ton earth cast recording an intimate dialogue with the Midwestern Landscape and its seasons.

20 May 2021: Awaiting the harvest of Dig.

07 August 2021: Two weeks away from the harvest of Dig.

12 August 2021: As we prepare to harvest Dig next Saturday the 21st, it’s been quite powerful to understand what it means to produce a sculptural representation of the Midwestern Landscape, as it’s not just a 20-ton earth cast. It’s something much greater. It’s a recording of the seasons, it’s a final resting place, it’s a watering hole for the local wildlife that includes, dear, wild turkeys, and feral cats. Dig has become an earth sculpture that has integrated itself into the landscape and yet we still don’t even know what it looks like. That’s the beauty, as its physical representation is a byproduct of its context and embedded story. Although I am anxious to excavate it from the earth, it will be bittersweet. Going to have to provide a few more watering holes in the meantime.

21 August 2021: After nine months and all the seasons the Midwest could offer, we were able to harvest a piece of its Landscape. Working at this scale, nothing ever goes according to plan but with the right team and trust, you get there. Thanks to Maple St. Construct and Jonathan Schall for the jazz like moves when our cable broke and we had to lift up this 20-ton earth cast like the ancients, beyond grateful.

Art as a communal act, to produce something that is larger than one individual. Art as the sum of parts, art as the sum of context, art as time, art as reflection, art as grief, art as birth, art as the sum of fears, art as the sum of risk, art as the sum of vulnerability, art as the sum of strength and teamwork, art as the sum of delayed gratification, art as the sum of a slow emerging process that is gray and impossible to objectify and at times justify. At a certain point art becomes a sensibility and a way of being that works through a mystical atmosphere. We can feel that through the excitement of process, the rush of taking something on that is larger than ourselves, a scale that forces all of us to question the values we set, to construct only to deconstruct.