See Laura Ellen Bacon's Rejuvenation

Jill K. D’Alessandro: Can you tell me about your schooling?

Laura Ellen Bacon: For my undergraduate degree, I completed an art foundation course with a specialization in photography. I did my degree locally. I didn’t really want to be far away from home. As it happened, I was studying art in a building that my dad had designed in the 1970s.

Then I realized two years later that I wanted to use my hands somehow. I decided to return to school for a degree in applied arts. At the time, I was working at a little art gallery and while I was doing my degree, I thought that I would enjoy using it to further gallery work. But in the last six months of my degree, it just burst out. I'd never anticipated before then that I would be an artist, effectively, and then it just suddenly broke out.

JKD: What kind of work were you making then?

LEB: I wanted to create spaces that I could climb inside, but I didn't use willow straight away. At first, I was harvesting loads of sticks from my mother’s fruit farm. My mom was bringing it into my university space. She'd fill her little car completely and bring me all these sticks. That was fabulous but it soon became a bit problematic because I was using so many sticks, so many cut bushes and branches that I didn't feel like I could keep up with my own demand.

So, I started exploring willow only because it meant hundreds of sticks in a bundle. When it arrived, I cut the ties on the first bundle and all the sticks relaxed and fell out onto the floor, it was fantastic. It really appealed to me that I didn't have to involve anybody else or any other machinery, because a lot of the things that we've done involve big machinery or welding, and it just didn't click with my brain somehow. I needed to be able to do it all myself, privately. I wanted to be able to do it from start to finish. That would've been the end of the year, in 2000.

JKD: Willow is a material that was mostly associated with basketry, but you didn't come from a craft or basketry background. What are the properties that attracted you to the material?

LEB: The crucial detail within willow that helps me with all my work is that you can twist it and tie a knot. Each knot is made of about two feet of willow in its length. Because it can be tied by itself, it enables frameworks and three-dimensional shape to really come alive. For me, that felt like being able to draw three-dimensionally. I'll make the framework out of willow, and then sometimes I have to adapt that framework and that means cutting sections and squeezing shapes together, so, it's malleable and easy to adjust. I like the height of it as well. It is the height of a person. When a bundle arrives, it's five or six feet. I enjoy that human scale.

JKD: Much of your work is site-specific. Can you speak about the relationship between the organic and manufactured environments in your work, specifically the relationship with architecture?

LEB: I find it difficult to put my finger on exactly why, but I dream about buildings. My dad was an architect, which means that he introduced me to buildings at a young age. I have all sorts of architecture books at home, but beyond that I don't know very much. Any dream I ever have there is always a variety of buildings in them.

In terms of the actual work, on a personal level, I really enjoy making a little space that I can climb inside. It feels quite primitive. Being able to tie to building's structural details is appealing. You're knotting over them and building from them. When a framework is being created and the weave starts to work into the framework, you can feel the solidity of the building or the structure within the weave. Then the weave, it really becomes quite stout. It starts to feel like a strong muscle somehow, and it becomes sturdier and sturdier.

I enjoy both the slightly-alien quality and the natural quality of the nest-like appearance. This idea that something has created this form. At first glance, if people see something on a building, they might not be sure whether it's been made by plants, or some natural accumulation, like when sticks and leaves accumulate in corners. I always come back to that word —accumulation.

JKD: Given the importance of architecture in your work, how did the structure of the Hamilton Building, designed by Daniel Libeskind, affect your conception of the work?

LEB: There are many different factors in my approach. On the one hand, the structure of the form itself very much leans into the building but is also trying to spring off it. I see the artwork as something which is alive in its own way, and it's found a good place to grow inside the museum. It's also as if the artwork is contemplating moving again, but the viewer will not know where. I want to give the sense that the artwork itself may be slightly unpredictable. It is a form which embodies a feeling of growth or progression and evolution.

It might sound strange, but I think about the air passing through the completed work and visitors going in and out of different gallery spaces; everybody's breath and words as they're going up the steps. All their vibrations will be felt by the sculpture. All those fibers inside the willow will listen and soak up the environment. Every knot and every strand of the willow all the way through is absorbing and listening to the building and the people within it.

It's an amazing building to work with. The way the wall itself leans, in contrast to the straight edges, is brilliant, yet those straight edges also have many fascinating angles. There is a sense of movement. I hope I responded to that in the sense that the work itself is leaning and moving in different directions as well, in its own way.

My feeling is that the lean of that wall is coming from the ground, so it felt right that the design worked from the ground up. The sense of being deep-rooted felt really important. I have the feeling that the structure must root itself into the wall in order to stay at that angle

JKD: Much of your previous work was created for historic buildings. How is it different responding to contemporary architecture?

LEB: With historic buildings, where people have been over 100 years, 200 years, I find there is a feeling that buildings have held onto things.

With a newer building, it's about the present moment. With the Denver Art Museum, it's about the visitor experience of that building because they can move around it and view it from so many different places. There's something about the surface and the reflection of all those fabulous angles, walls, and balustrades. I see the internal reflection of light from all those surfaces as inspiring. Visitors will experience the work at various times of day. The way that the light falls upon it at different times of the day will change the effect, adding another dimension.

JKD: What do you hope visitors will get out of experiencing your installation?

LEB: I hope that if they don't already, that they'll look at natural materials in a new way. And I hope that they'll experience the artwork in novel ways. For example, willow has a wonderful aroma. It does have a scent, and when you are in that space in the museum, you'll be able to smell it. It's a nice smell though. It's just a nice, soft, natural aroma.