Orisons

Orisons is an earthwork Marguerite created especially for San Luis Valley, and one of the largest ever to be created by a single female artist. Its title is drawn from the old English word for ‘prayers’, as well as the French word ‘orée’ – to mean ‘edge’, cusp or brink – which in turn evokes the horizon of possibility. The culmination of Marguerite’s efforts to ‘bring to life’ a mythical ecosystem within an existing ecosystem, the 160-acre earthwork was situated in the plot of a fallow crop circle and engages every aspect of the site – from its animal inhabitants and microclimate to its changing skyscapes, mountainous backdrop, local vegetation and diverse, expansive land histories. Set within an arid, post-extractive world, but premised upon consultation and attunement, Orisons is Marguerite’s expression of how ‘land art becomes multispecies care’.

Among many others, the project involved close collaboration with geomancers, local agronomists, resource conservationists, the Ute Mountain Tribe of Towaoc, architect Ronald Rael, as well as a host of experts in conservation, wildlife refuge, ornithology. 84 kinetic sculptures, strategically placed around the plot according to the advice of geomancers, summoned the site’s energies; activated by periods of sun and forceful winds, the works are formally inspired by the legendary elemental cycles and natural life native to the valley. The sculptures evoke the perpetual transformation characteristic of San Luis Valley, and range from wind-activated instruments lamenting the absence of rain or singing songs for the biannual migration of Sandhill Cranes, to usable hammocks whose design recalls a flock of these seasonal guests. To induce another kind of ‘flight’ – in the form of lucid dreams and ethereal or astral visions – Marguerite commissioned forager Shae Whitney to create a herbaceous elixir inspired by the ‘flying ointment’ of European witches and medicinal Native American plants, among its ingredients: Sweetgrass, Russian thistle, Mugwort, Yarrow and plant ash. Visitors were invited to freely roam the land and, in doing so, momentarily add to its milieu; only a diagram created under the instruction of the geomancers and Marguerite’s observations records the seen and unseen presences populating the earthwork – a bird burial, remains of water pipes, ‘a 150-year-old sadness’ – gesturing towards a palimpsest of extinct or forgotten worlds. The afterlife of Orisons exists in a third, final embodiment: an audio guide and work of poetry that transcends space and time by transporting its listener to the earthwork.