Beginning of my final project.

I'm still working on my final project, but I thought I would share pictures of the location so you can get an idea of what I imagine. So this is my grandparents old store. One is from the 1920s and the other built in the 1940s. My grandparents house is in the woods behind it and every day they would walk through the woods and so I thought I would place stones where the old path was to remember their past. The repetition of the stones would also play into the concept of the human dominance over nature, as I would be altering the earth's surface. The path would also be symbolic of a return to a much more simple era, the time when humans lived with relative harmony with the earth, especially in the particular part of rural Virginia.

There are a few concerns that I will have to address in regards to my project, the most notable is the problem of the juxtaposition of the newly constructed deck ( as seen below), and the newly placed gravel. I will hopefully be able to find a way to manipulate the path so that these two specific points don't interfere to heavily with my work. I feel that there may be a way to tie them into the overall work someway regarding the idea of "time" and "change" as the path does have some of that connotation attached to it.  Overall however, I think the Store provides an excellent location to express the ideas that I want to target involving the generations of my family that have used it. One can tell merely from the pictures that the fingerprints of my family are all over it.

The path, which can almost be made out in the picture below collected my grandparent's house with the now dilapidated shop. The path of the stones that I place will follow the natural contours of the earth, and proceed to weave in between the trees that are present. This "curving" will ultimately serve two separate but equally important points that help tie together the overall theme of my work. The first, and simpler, point is that curving will follow a natural line. Its hard to fully tell from the picture but the path to their old home followed the natural curvature of the forrest. 

The second purpose that the "curve" of the trail will emulate is that of the strife of human existence, especially in regards to the time in which my grandparents would have used this shop. The ebb and flow of the seasons along with the hardships that came with the shifts in a family whose main reliance was on agriculture, is mirrored by the wave-like nature of the path. It also serves as reminder that even though life may have its ups and downs there is always a end destination to strive for. The most powerful point of my project I feel is the emotional attachment to human emotion that the manipulation of the Earth represents.