Wandering Spirit

2000
20’H  – variable dimensions
Aluminum

The Italian filmmaker, Marco Agostinelli invited John to visit the small hilltop town of Panicale, situated between Rome and Florence. Agostinelli had established an art program in the town involving an exhibition space in a decommissioned twelfth-century Catholic church. The space was an instant inspiration for John. As he surveyed the space, he took seriously the hallowed ground on which he walked and was reverently conscious of how he might be altering the spirit life of that ancient sanctuary.

John went back to the United States and found in Lexington, Kentucky an old icehouse with the same dimensions and ceiling height as the twelfth-century Panicale chapel. He set out to build a single work for the interior of the church whose walls would provide support and create a maze, a labyrinth, in which participants would interact with the sculpture. The work was shipped to Panicale for it’s debut venue.

Word of the exhibition spread quickly. There were immediate requests for the piece to travel to other venues; however the work’s spatial requirements relative to its site eliminated all but one . The sculpture was moved to Italy’s University of Camerino, into an outside courtyard where the piece resided for one year.

IN 2001 Wandering Spirit was brought back to the United States and reconfigured into a self-supporting structure, free from dependence on structural walls. Wandering Spirit was on site at the Gulf Coast Museum and was on view in Sarasota as an important element of the  Drawing in Space Peninsula Project.