Give Leave/Take Flight (1998-9) was a site-specific installation presented at Waterfields, the home of artist Carole Bolsey, in Maryland, USA.
Situated next to a field in which the first Quaker service in the New World was performed in the 1600's (the Quakers being refugees from religious persecution in Europe). It is also under one of the major North-South migratory flyways of Canadian Geese and other water foul.
I decided to use the interweave of Migration and Immigration as the premise for this work.
I brought to the site glass plaques sand blasted with words pertaining to these ideas - each plaque 2" x 7".
I then collected sticks, feathers, pods and vines from the surrounding land to construct hanging devices for the words. I hung the words along the 1 mile circular tract surrounding a corn field. I placed these little hanging poem/sculptures in trees, bushes and fences so that as one walks the walk a glinting word or word cluster winks out from the wood.