Catch Basin

I'm Nancy Holt and I'm the artist who created the work that you're looking at. I named it "Catch Basin". The work has this essential potential for rain catching.

Above ground you see four 15 foot posts and hanging from those posts are two rings which echo in size and distance of one from the other the basin that is in the ground. And as you can see there are 200 feet of terracotta tiles in the ground that the water when it rains drains into. And the water then goes to the lowest point, which is the basin. So you can see water flowing into the basin on rainy days and on the rest of the days you can imagine it happening.

This is one of a number of works I did that are exposing and utilizing functional systems, which are usually hidden beneath the ground or behind walls and out of our minds and consciousness. So by exposing it we bring a new consciousness to bear on how substances that are essential to our lives are transported or channeled into our existence.

So, as you approach the sculpture, seeing the four posts and the hanging rings bring you to the centre, bring you to the "Catch Basin". Then you can look up and see pieces of the sky through the rings. And I like to think that as you see arcs of sky through the rings that the work is, in that sense, bringing the sky down to earth, just as when it rains the work is catching the water from the sky and the water's flowing through the work.

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