Veil

Veil–a collaboration with artist and architect Jeffrey Riedl–is a large fabric like lattice of airy line work appearing to billow off of the South Haven Cemetery Service Buildings rectilinear geometry. Its gentle presence has a subtle elegance that compliments the material sophistication of the building that it inhabits and it works itself into the cemeteries sensitive context on different meaningful levels. Veil is a essentially a sculpture seen as a two dimensional depiction. It is a single moment in time taken from an animated digital model of cloth subjected to wind and gravity algorithms. It is both material and immaterial; a picture of an entity in another realm.

Cloth is a typical symbol seen in medieval Vanitas paintings. Vanitas paintings are Mementos Mori in theme. In other words, they are reflections on mortality as a means of considering the vanity of life and the transient nature of existence. They are symbolic reminders of mortality and the certainty of death; rotten fruit, skulls and hourglasses. They also typically portray cloth and empty clothing in order to represent absence and loss.

Veil uses the symbol of cloth to represent loss in a non-religious way. A veil is used to separate the mourning from the day. Those behind the veil are hidden, their grief private, personal and safe. The veil is a symbol associated with death and dying, universal and ancient, symbolic but non-denominational. As a metaphor it can be thought of as a filter between life and death; the eyes of the living on one side and those remembered beyond its edge.

The veil has a liminal quality. On either side is a confluence of opposing conditions; light and dark, personal and private space, inside and outside. The simple lightweight fabric is sometimes all that separates us from grave conditions and a view through the veil alters the perception of reality. Light catches the subtle transgressions of the simple stitch work as it moves in the wind or with the motion of the body and alters the view. The conventional geometry is skewed by these factors in exciting an unanticipated ways.