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The scrim pool in Peace Plaza periodically fills with water, flowing in and around the raised letterforms along unique pathways that are responsive to the environment and site conditions. The granite pavers are fixed in place, set like a bed of letterpress type however, the structure of the Plaza is designed to bring those fixed words to life in dynamic and unexpected ways. The entire field is set in Gotham, a sans-serif typeface known for its geometric form and legibility.
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The horizontal lines, formed from the intersection of these spine words with the project’s narrative fragments and the poem’s full length, weave a chorus of repetitions and crossings. While a loom crosses many vertical warp and horizontal weft threads, this composition is organized by a single vertical spine of words excerpted from Westerman’s poem, running west to east through the center of the Peace Plaza. Origins, headwaters, cycles, and renewal permeate the composition, and the language moves between the otherworldly and the terrestrial, the geologic and the mythologic. The text of the piece does not comprise a single narrative, however, but rather brings narrative fragments into relation, forming a field of phrases in a vocabulary that reflects how the world, the day, and our stories begin and begin again. Her poem De Wakpa Taŋka Odowaŋ / Song for the Mississippi River-originally commissioned by the Friends of the Mississippi as part of their The River Inspires event (2018)-is interwoven throughout A SONG FOR WATER, and its words are a part of the many choral refrains one encounters while moving across the public space. Westerman is an enrolled member of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and is Director of Humanities at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Gwen Westerman, affirms that the Peace Plaza was first a Dakota place and that we are all connected by water, our first medicine.ĭr. The composition, anchored and organized by a spine of writing by poet and historian Dr. Stretching over 250 feet, the tactile surface weaves fragments and phrases that evoke concepts of time, geography, history of the land, experiences of place, and the beginnings of human culture. With De Wakpa Taŋka Odowaŋ / Song for the Mississippi River (2018)Ī commission of Destination Medical Center,Īnn Hamilton’s artwork A SONG FOR WATER is a field of language, emerging in relief from sandblasted granite pavers, in downtown Rochester, Minnesota’s central plaza.