When obtrusive buildings encroached on Anne Reichardt's view outside her home in Fayetteville, the artist turned frustration into inspiration.
The structures, she says, were just a strip along the sprawling green land and she immediately invisioned a piece of white paper along the horizon. Gradually she began to play with the idea of how she could make a privacy screen into a work of art. Then a spark.
"All of a sudden I saw waves," she explains of what eventually became an 120 by 15 foot installation errected out of steel posts and custom-sewn nylon fabric dyed by hand and raised by community members who joined to help her turn her vision into reality.
"It feels like beautiful sunlight and light coming through the translucent nylon," she says. "The tonal variations of the blue rippl[e] in ways that are not predictable or describale, like the water of a wave."
For Reichardt this project is more than an art installation or partition- it is a show of community coming together to preserve the natural beauty of the land. Although the initial installation came down for repairs, she plans to resurrect it with a grand re-opening reception the weekend before midterm election day, Tuesday, Nov. 6.
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