I just wrote about Joni Mitchell’s River and the strange coincidences that seem to follow in its wake. Yesterday, Kate and I went the Des Moines Art Center. As we walked into the large installation room, I was talking with her about how I have trouble talking in large groups, how I don’t know when or how to take my turn, when I looked up and saw this on the ceiling, and it stopped me in my tracks and I just stood there, mouth open, gawking at the ceiling.
The Des Moines Art Center is pleased to premiere River by artist and poet, Jen Bervin, as part of the exhibition Iowa Artists 2018: Jen Bervin. River maps the Mississippi from the headwaters in Lake Itasca, Minnesota to its delta south of New Orleans, Louisiana. Over the course of 12 years, the artist sewed the 230 curvilinear feet long sculpture by hand, including each of the thousands of reflective, silver sequins that densely cover the surface. She calculates that it took the same amount of time to sew each section of the river that it would take to walk the real one-the scale of the “map” is one inch to one mile. River is presented on the ceiling of the I. M. Pei building from a geocentric perspective, that is, as if viewers were inside the earth’s interior looking up at the river bed.
Iowa Artists 2018: Jen Bervin – Des Moines Art Center
It was really striking, and it wandered and meandered across the contours of the ceiling. Both Kate and I struck off in different directions to trace it and see how far it went. We didn’t find the placard, so it wasn’t until I looked it up today that I learned that it’s a scale replica of the Mississippi. Pretty cool.