Becky James teaching Portfolio
Movies
Graph 1
Graph 2
The Salt Mine
"What we've heard is that a salt mine can seem like an empty hole. It can appear that no work is being done. In a carved out room, a small clean salt room , there is no way to tell where the room ends. It can be very dangerous down there. We've also heard that the salt mine is a blank slate, a new beginning, when things seem just as precarious as they are sturdy. Maybe this is a way of focusing, or maybe it is a place where you will be forgotten about long enough so that you can focus. The hallways here won't give you much room to see what is happening, or what is about to happen. In a salt mine it is never so much that it is a maze, there is a plan, an overly simple plan. The paths always lead to important rooms. The same is true here with our mine, but the mining is not a metaphor, what we have done is the reverse of mining, we have added materials, only to take them away. It is literally a salt mine, in every sense. We've heard a salt mineis that place where you never want to go, but always have to go when you start something you haven't done before. Our space is easy enough to figure out, four halls, one room. It is like a home. It is also like an arena. More likely, it is a place where you are forced to be alone."