Tides, a multi-site installation and process-based sculpture, Deer Isle, Maine, 2019

With support from the Tides Museum and Institute Artist in Residence Program

Tide piece (pylon), 2019, canvas, rope, grommets, dock of an old canning factory on Deer Isle, ME

In the Bay of Fundy, the US’ most Northeastern point, the ocean rises and falls a massive 28 feet twice a day. At the edge, miles of land are revealed and retaken. Tidal life and time eat at the footings of coastal industries, their decay absolutely creative. The border here is a green-zone, liminal but dominant, unfathomable and invisible. Tides is an attempt to behold, and relate, from a human’s finite scale of time and space. It is the artist’s ego humbled.

Montana Simone wrapped two pylons of a decaying cannery (est. 1886) in canvas. Over the course of three months, its installation functioned as public art, altering the waterfront view and architecture, while highlighting the landmark building’s political crossroads between ruin and rehabilitation. Meanwhile, the raw canvas was submerged by the ocean twice every 24hrs, leaving a recording of the tides. The first pylon was unwrapped and exhibited after 16 tide cycles (seen above), in the Seaman’s church of Eastport, Maine, on Deer Isle, as part of the exhibition of the Tides Museum and Residency Program. This two-floor exhibition included a multimedia installation of found objects, painting, audio and video created during those 16 tide cycles, including a sound piece extrapolated from the tide chart from those dates, into tones (below).

^ Tide Canvas, 16 cycles (printed), 2019, canvas, rust, algae, ink

Coverage in The Atlantic and Bangor Daily News:

Tides, studio installation shot, 2019, fiberglass, video, found objects, chalk, audio