Bivouac Perspective - Good Harbor Beach, Gloucester, MA.

Veterans Day, 2008

 

 

On Veterans Day 2008 I decided to honor the occasion with a temporary installation of the piece, "Bivouac Perspective" that I had installed at the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA, over the Winter of 2003 - 2004.

I selected a site on Good Harbor Beach, near where I live and, with a little help from my friends, Tom and Joy Halstead, Norma Tarr, and Karen Ristuben and her son Jake, we commenced the installation at the eleventh hour on 11/11/2008. It was a cold, blustery day and the installation of tents in high wind was a challenge, but we persisted and completed the task just after noon. After my helpful and generous friends departed, I stayed with the installation for the remainder of the day and chatted with the curious visitors who wandered to the South end of the beach. The most frequently asked question was, "what does 'bivouac' mean?", and it served as just another reminder of how far removed the civilian citizens are from the military experience.

At the end of evening nautical twilight, I struck the show and packed it up in the van, leaving behind only the traces left in the sand by the wind blowing through the tents and our footprints - all to be erased by the next high tide.

 

The whole nine yards contained		Installation in process.
Installation complete - front view		Installation with vanishing point - detail
View from the dunes		View from the dunes 2
Siting from Beach Road.		Backlit detail
Backlit from the dunes.		The perpetrator.