Margaret Boozer at the U.S. Embassy Djibouti

Margaret Boozer installs her Art in Embassies project in the U.S. Embassy Djibouti.

Full Transcript

0:00 ♪ Music ♪
0:35 MARGARET BOOZER: I like to tie pieces to the site where they’re going to go,
0:42 and sometimes that’s actually digging clay from the site and using it in the work.
0:50 So I was looking at what was going on with the geology and one of the things that I saw that I was really
0:56 interested in was the salt lakes that are there. I liked the sort of visual rhyming
1:06 symmetry that with — kind of the — how I’ve been doing some work anyway with these disk
1:11 pieces and kind of doing these circular compositions and just thinking about clusters of white
1:18 disks kind of making the perimeter.
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1:35 You know thinking about an Embassy being a little piece of one country in another country,
1:42 that this is literally Maryland clay and it’s earth from Maryland that is going over to
1:48 Djibouti and is going to live there in the US Embassy.
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2:27 We’re in — at Lake Assal in Djibouti. This is amazing to actually come out here and see
2:36 this place having only seen the images and kind of working — responding to the images
2:42 and now seeing it for real — it’s amazing. I guess I just sort of have the idea that
2:49 because I’ve been here and seen it that it will affect the piece in some way.
2:53 You want to twist it and slide it that way so we don’t risk dropping the edge into the piece.
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3:19 Square foot wise, it’s probably comparable to other ones I’ve done, but the other large
3:26 pieces have been long bands. And this is more — you know- feels bigger just because it’s
3:35 like 16 ft by 20 ft.
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3:44 Pretty happy with it. It’s — it’s a long way from that little pizzle sketch and trying
3:52 to imagine it there, and then looking at it on my floor and trying to imagine it on the
3:57 wall here, and now finally — finally seeing it come into shape.
4:03 ♪ Music ♪