Cocoon

Miniature cocoons

After the community builds the large Cocoon together, I ask people to make individual miniature cocoons. The miniatures are hung inside the large Cocoon.

Where the large cocoon is the physical representation of the community, the miniature cocoons are the individual voices within the community. They are what people wish for the future.

I ask people to choose an object, make a miniature cocoon around it, and then I interview them. I ask, “What do you wish your cocoon to become?”

The miniature cocoons and wishes from people in Greenwood, MS

Some wish to be turned into birds, or for money for food — carrots, peas, broccoli, their mother’s fried chicken, a trip to the new McDonalds. Some wish for paint to make pictures, or a mouse for their computer, or to be butterflies that hide under the bridges with the bats and listen to the river at night. A woman wishes to be re-united with her dead son and weeps quietly. A man wishes for the children he teaches to have a better life. Some see clouds full of snakes that grow wings and fly down to earth. A boy wishes a shotgun shell to be a kitten, a girl bottle caps to become a flower she can take care of at home. A 10-year-old wishes that leaves and wooden dowels turn into security from people who rob his home at night. A young man wishes for an orange car that will take him to Nebraska, a place he once saw in a magazine. A woman sprinkles her father’s cologne and mother’s face powder on the leaves she wraps in wire and wishes only for love in this world.

I will continue to post more miniature cocoons and wishes, and eventually the audio clips.

All photographs by Eric Etheridge

In July I arrived in the Mississippi Delta to build the third giant Cocoon in my Cocoon Project. This Cocoon was built with Communities in Schools (CIS) and the people of Greenwood, MS. Funders included the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Natural Resources Initiative of North Mississippi. Other Cocoons have been built in Cragsmoor, New York and Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Mexico City.

The skin was woven out of bamboo and giant cane and the structure is of willow. We used solar power and three LED bulbs to illuminate it. The repetition of form that it made with the Keesler Bridge behind it looked like ocean waves in the night. Behind the bridge sits the Leflore County Courthouse.

Cocoon is a temporary sculpture. The same design and process is used to build each Cocoon with communities around the world. Two elements define each Cocoon – unique local materials and the community.

In Greenwood special thanks to the director of CIS, Linda Whittington, for her hard work and support in giving me and the community the opportunity to create my project in Mississippi.

Thank you Robin Whitfield, Hart Henson, David Moore and Shun Pearson, who all worked tirelessly and with great enthusiasm on Cocoon Greenwood and bringing so many citizens of Greenwood together to build.

In Los Angeles thank you to lighting designer, Alison Brummer, for her lighting knowledge and continuing support of Cocoon. In New York thanks also to Anne Frederick at Hester Street Collaborative, Marc Turkel at Leroy Street Studio Architecture, and Nat Oppenheimer at Robert Silman Associates Structural Engineers for their continuing technical knowledge, structural advice, and support of the Cocoon Project.

Click for more about Week 1 of the Greenwood Cocoon build.

Photograph by Eric Etheridge

Willow by the Tallahatchie

Artists David Moore, Hart Hensen and Robin Whitfield look for a stand of straight green willows by the Tallahatchie River. We’ll test willow as a possible material for making the Cocoon’s structural circles.

Cocoon Greenwood 2010

July 12-24: Build Dates

July 24: Lighting and Celebration

I’ll be building a Cocoon in Greenwood, Mississippi in July 2010 with CIS (Community in Schools), and the artists and community of Greenwood, Mississippi. We’ll come together to build our 26 foot Cocoon with local materials, create individual miniature cocoons and tell their stories, and hunt for moths. We will grow gourds on top of the Cocoon and light the Cocoon’s interior (hopefully with solar power) on July 24.

outside Greenwood in the Mississippi Delta

Photograph by Eric Etheridge

This is the last day before the Cocoon lighting. We make more mats. People start to bring their miniature cocoons to hang inside the large Cocoon. We test the lights for tomorrow night.

Inside the structure there is shade and above blue sky. Like a child’s fort you can watch the world go by through the openings between the vana. The vana de platano makes beautiful shadows on the stones in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

Testing the Lights

We use three sets of fluorescent lights from the office and connect them to the street lights. The light is cool and white. The many layers of vana de platano mats achieve a density that is both geometric and delicate. The Cocoon becomes an ephemeral object — grand beauty on a human scale.

All photographs this post by Andrea Navarro

A strong wind blows throughout the night and morning. It comes from the corner of the Chihuahua Building straight across the plaza and knocks the Cocoon around. The reinforced Poliducto bends. What had seemed finished and perfect the night before is fragile and skewed by morning.

This is after all the challenge of change, nothing alive is ever finished or perfect but always in the difficult process of constantly shifting. We are lucky to catch the moments that are remarkable.

To solve for the wind, we build an “A” under each of the tallest points, and a “T” under the two shortest points in the circles. To give the wind less of a wall to push against, we rotate the structure 180 degrees. Wind rushes in one end of the Cocoon tunnel and out the other without putting force on the structure.

By afternoon the wind is gone and the Cocoon sounds like a beehive humming with activity as children from the art program at CCUT weave vana de platano directly onto the structure.

Both outside …

and inside the Cocoon

Children learn and discuss the life cycle of moths and butterflies in the shade of the Cocoon.

From the book, Butterflies & Moths by Barbara Taylor

photo Andrea Navarro

Afternoon at Tlatelolco

In the afternoon we weave enough mats to wrap the entire Cocoon structure in a vana de platano skin.

We’ve also found that simple packing tape is the most effective way to tie off the ends of the mats and compensate for shrinkage as the vana de platano lets off the water in its veins.

With the first layer of skin completed we can decide on the materials for the next layer. We want an organic substance for diffusing light.

All photographs on this post by Eric Etheridge.

Morning at Tlatelolco

We spend the morning on our hands and knees close to the stones of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas weaving the Cocoon skin out of the 2,000 vana de plantano (banana leaf veins) that we brought from Merced.

People come from all over to participate.

In Cragsmoor, NY, we made the Cocoon skin from corn stalks still covered in leaves. These leaves diffused the light and created a beautiful glow inside and outside that Cocoon. Here in Mexico City the vana has no leaves, they have been removed and sold, which is the reason the veins are free at the Merced. We are considering weaving other materials into the skin. But first, we will put the skin on the Cocoon structure, and that’s for the afternoon and the next post ….

All photographs on this post by Eric Etheridge.

In the morning we pick up the smaller PVC for reinforcing the Poliducto, put it on the roof of the car, and bring it to the plaza. We now have Poliducto, PVC, and steel wire to build the tubing for the circles. The thicker PVC from yesterday will be woven along the sides of the circles for extra support as well as to tie on the vana de platano mats. Another group goes to Merced and brings back 2,000 vana de platano to weave the Cocoon skin.

beginning the mats

cutting open the roll of steel wire

measuring the PVC to cut

inserting the steel wire

closing up a 10 foot circle

closing and taping a 10 foot circle

two sections waiting to be joined

“What is it?”