(sein) Feldman's 300

You look in your closet and find a musty old shoe box. This is the starting point for Joseph Cornell's "box with bird's nest and oak galls". Inside you put the precious treasure you found moments ago amidst the chilly breeze of late fall. An old birds nest from your backyard, now long abandoned. Too early to complete this work, you dash back outside, and nest to the tree you find three oak galls. Arranging them neatly above your nest, inside the bruised cardboard box, the piece is complete.

This work oozes a simple elegance. Nearly monochromatic, in a fine gold, it has a depth that seems infinite at times. Garnished with leaves and overpowered with simplicity it makes very few statements about itself. It makes me reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau's "Walking". You wish to send yourself to where that nest came from, and see its history. You want to immerse yourself within the box, smell the oak, feel the wind, taste the pollen. In a sense, become the very bird, laboring to make that nest. It's a little ecosystem in a box, a framed, three dimensional snapshot of the world that is becoming less and less.

As Thoreau said, "I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated; part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports".

This work speaks to me in the same terms. You see this slice of nature, now frozen as an eternal reminder to what is important. To look outside your own life, and deeper into the entire world. To not become just a member to society, but to nature as well.