The Devil’s Rope (Entanglement series) 2023 copyright Douglas Stockdale –
While continuing to assess my Critical Mass 2023 Finalist project, Entanglement, earlier in the week I had hand-colored a couple of my cyanotypes with Prismacolor art pencils to evaluate an alternative way to provide focus on the Structural Housing Inequities in America for this project. I layered the color over a strand of barbed wire in the image, as the barbed wire, aka The Devil’s Rope, represented the harsh and terrible attempts to control individuals access as to where they could live.
While researching this concept of how barbed wire could represent Bureaucratic polices in the 1930’s to structural institutionalize housing inequities, I found it interesting in how barbered wire took on the alternative name The Devil’s Rope by the American Indians in western United States. Barbed wire is also considered the number one reason why the history of the American West quickly changed; from the open plains of roaming Bison herds, the storied cattle drives and the nomadic movement of the American Indian nations to parcels of land ringed by the nasty and effective barbed wire. When cattle were kept within a defined area by the barbed wire, it almost entirely eliminated the need for cowboys to roam the range to herd the cattle. The dangerous barbed wire fencing also tore up any animals, beasts or individuals who brushed up against it. As documented, ranchers would not only fence their property, but also illegally fence adjacent public land, which lead to some of the range wars over the contested use of barbed wire.
The American Indian does not have a concept of land ownership similar to what we have today, which was institutionalize by ranchers, farmers and politicians. The Indian nations accept the grand concept of an open land in which both the animals and people could freely move about. Barbed wire changed all of that and immensely (adversely) effected their historic way of life.
As the saying goes, the effects of barbed wire is really good at ‘keeping things in’ and ‘keeping things out’. Thus, my idea of using the barbed wire as a metaphor for the Bureaucracy polices of the 1930’s to redline parts of a city, to either keep out, or conversely keep in, certain groups of individuals, usually based on race and ethnicity. These redlining polices, out of the public’s eye, was a process to institutionalize our current housing inequity issues. The redlining by the banks determined who could obtain a long term mortgage, at what rates and if ‘special’ conditions were attached to the mortgage. The redlining was quickly adopted by the real estate companies, knowing who might or might not obtain a mortgage, thus were known to coach individuals into or out of a redline area. Although redlining formalize prior racial housing practices, there were other bureaucratic polices also meant to control who could live where, such as ‘Sun Downer’ towns (who was allowed in certain cities after sundown), housing covenants (which race could own a house within certain cities) and the use of zoning to regulate high density, low income housing versus large housing plots and low density aspects such as large green belts. Nevertheless, I think the symbolic use of red lines as all encompassing aspect of creating Structural Housing Inequities is effective for this project.
While evaluating my hand-colored Devil’s Rope, I realized that my choice of color, scarlet red, also had other associated undertones; red is associated with the both the Devil and pain (and even a political party). As another what-if, I also hand-sewn a bright red thread, both a very thin version and one that is a bit thicker (above) on top of The Devil’s Rope in some of my cyanotypes. While sewing this thread, I also attempted to keep visible the sharp barbs of the barbed wire, thus the resulting sewn line has the appearance of a series of dashes. While the barbs are not alway easily seen, I think this adds a bit of mystery to the sewn print, hopefully visually engaging the viewer and inspire them to get in closer to inspect what might be going on.
My concern with the thin red thread version is that it almost disappears in my copy images and has a minimal visual impact. And a lack of ‘visual impact’ was another criticism about my Critical Mass Finalist project. I am trying to get out of my comfort zone and I have predominately started using a thicker thread (yarn?) in my current evaluations. As well as I am extending my sewing beyond the printed image into the adjacent paper margins to imply that issues associate with The Devil’s Rope extends beyond what we see, both emotionally and physically.
The Devil’s Rope (Entanglement series), cyanotype print with hand-stitching, image size 9 x 9″ printed on a sheet of 11 x 14″ archival Revere Platinum hot-press cotton rag.
Make every day an Earth Day
Doug
Singular Images 