The Highway Between
Simons, Bronwyn M
Citations
Abstract
The contemporary highway is the culmination of our species’ productive ingenuity, a site of ultimate disconnection and control. The highway untethers us from the earth, forcing us to travel without walking, rushing us past too quickly to smell, too loudly to hear, and too elevated to feel through its thick asphalt. The Highway Between fights the highway’s frenzied isolation and selfish force with obsessive gathering, binding, and building, using clay to enact ancient human impulses in a place designed not to be touched. These actions are captured in large-scale ceramic sculptures that combine manufactured and wild clay with raw materials collected from the highway and transformed through fire. The Highway Between reestablishes human touch with the earth where it is most forgotten, to fight the ever-widening gap between our collective mind and body.
