Welcome!
I’m Erin Elder, an artist, writer, and curator. I’ve been making art about and within specific places for over 20 years. My art doesn’t always look like art because it takes many forms — from bus tours to temporary encampments, illustrated books to immersive soundscapes. I do a lot of walking, reading, and question-asking to develop my work. Because drawing and writing are core to my process of understanding, I’ve decided to share image-and-text posts as a way of developing ideas, sharing research, making this work public, and building a community around place-based practices.
Sense of Place, Sense of Wonder
I’m not sure why places speak to me more than faces or figures or still lifes. Since pre-memory, I was fascinated with places and could remember them in great detail. I can still recall the houses along my childhood street well enough to draw a map. I can make a somewhat accurate blueprint of the apartment I lived in for a summer at age 20. My dreams seem to inhabit a landscape of interconnected places. I have a sixth sense about space and this curiosity about how things connect feeds into my love of place.
Places, locations, sites, spots. Places are physical settings where things happen and stories unfold. In other words, time passes and places remain. The remains of places are of particular interest — the ruins, the leftovers, the stuff that normally gets cropped outside the frame — because they reveal something that has been intentionally forgotten, erased, or overlooked. By learning to observe the many aspects of a place, one can potentially “read” the landscape and interpret its history.
I make a practice of going places to experience them in person. I want to visit historic sites, sacred sites, sites undergoing massive change, even those that have been obliterated by greed or war or worse. I want to notice the architecture of playgrounds, the position of flag poles, the infrastructure of dams, what is enclosed by fences, how weeds have reclaimed a parking lot. By observing the relationships between nature and humans, duration and entropy, I hope to better understand, if not life on this planet, then at least, the life of a particular place.
The Art of Attention
Simone Weil has said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” A hundred years later, Jenny O’Dell wrote about honing one’s attention as a form of resistance against profit-driven technologies. Whether attention is prayer or resistance, it is characterized by an openness to discovery and a commitment to seeing things as they are.
Attention is obviously a critical aspect of art and art-making, but I wonder: can attention be an artform in and of itself?
I want to hone my attention on the sites and scenes around me in order to better understand the world as it is. I want my attention to gather in the spaces where others’ might not, becoming curious about the places that are overlooked, mundane, or hidden in plain sight. Drawing and writing are the best ways I know how to focus my attention. As I draw, research, and type words onto the page, I observe more closely, follow my curiosity, and learn something.
I hope that by sharing these images and words, you might become curious about places too. What are the sites and scenes of your life? If you look closely, what do they reveal?
Work in Progress
The contents of this Substack are deeply considered and lovingly created but it’s important to note that they are fresh and new and in the process of becoming. I ask that you follow along with an open heart and a curious mind and the understanding that I’m learning as I go. Your comments and questions, even suggestions, are most welcome.
Follow Along
I hope you’ll join me in this journey of exploration and discovery! I hope to post a couple times a month. It’s free for now but if you enjoy site & scene, please consider supporting this work with a pledge. All drawings are for sale; if you see something you love, please reach out.
