Bed Rock
"Bed Rock"
MaDora Frey
I grew up beside an inactive quarry in Georgia, swimming in its clear, spring-fed lake and exploring the granite around it. As a child, I loved the lake and took its presence for granted. Only years later did I understand that water had filled the space where quarry workers had removed the stone. Learning how the lake formed changed the way I saw a place I knew well. It also helps explain why I’m drawn to former quarries, where years of erosion and plant growth can make the traces of industry difficult to recognize.
Bed Rock is a series of photographs of temporary sculptural interventions I made in the landscape. In making the work, I returned to the exposed granite, reflective water, and vegetation I came to know at the quarry. I researched the sites and visited them repeatedly, sometimes in different seasons. I carried materials in on foot and worked with the loose stone, wood, and plants I found there. For some compositions, I spent days or weeks raking and arranging rubble into patterns. Moving stones by hand became a way of studying a site. I learned their weight and texture and began to notice small differences in color I’d missed when walking through.
I see this work as an expansion of landscape painting. Using mirrors, dichroic glass, and found objects, I made decisions about color, light, and composition directly in the landscape. The straight edge of a mirror stood out against the irregular contours of the rock, while its surface reflected the sky or a patch of nearby vegetation. I moved between the arrangement and the camera, adjusting the materials as the light changed. I think about how women have been pictured in landscape painting and about my own role as the woman who made these images. My presence is visible in the placement of the stones and the point of view I chose.
Part of what I enjoyed about making Bed Rock was the looseness of the process. When I make a permanent outdoor sculpture, I have to consider how to secure the materials, how people will move safely around the piece, and how it will weather over time. With Bed Rock, I could try an arrangement, photograph it in the few minutes when the light was right, and take it apart. Other compositions developed over several visits. Sometimes I returned after a rain to find that stones I’d spent days arranging had shifted. Each photograph preserves one moment in that process.
Several spans of time meet in these images. A stone I moved in a few minutes took millions of years to form and may have come loose when someone quarried the site. My experience of these places still begins with the pleasure of being there. As I spend more time in them, I find myself asking who worked the land, what was taken from it, and who can move through it freely today.