The Woodmere Art
Museum’s Autumn Bale Installation, aka. The Hay Maze is celebrating
its third year and is quickly becoming a local tradition.  For
three consecutive years, the museum places about 20-40 tons of local farm
products, hay and straw bales, on their front lawn to assist in local harvest
celebrations. In years past, the “Witch’s Boot” and ‘Owlseye” (Owl's eye)
utilized traditional sized bales as maze building material. However, last
year's installation was greeted by The 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season.
Hurricanes Irene and Katia added thirteen inches of rain within its first week
of completion.
The rain coupled with a
grade slope varying from 1:15 to 1:24 made a ruin of the installation before
opening to the public in mid September 2011. Surprisingly, the weather did not
deter attendance, and Owleye, while a shadow of her intended form, successfully
entertained patrons and guests.
Woodmere asked me to do
second installation for 2012. Eager to apply what we learned in 2011, I accepted.
The criteria that informed the 2012 installation was as follows:
·      More mass- while the space between objects was
important, the stability of the actual object/wall was equally as important.
Visitors enjoyed climbing on objects as much as moving between objects.
·      Locate installation on the least sloping areas of
the site. Located in Chestnut Hill, the property has significant slope, thus
limiting suitable areas in which to stack bales.
·      Evoke an urban setting. During the last week in
October, Chestnut Hill celebrates the Harry Potter series of fiction and film
with a Harry Potter Festival. The Museum desired to coincide the installation
with the festival, thus naming it “Diagon Alley”.
·      Create a holding pen for a six-foot diameter
centerpiece ball, the symbolic resident of the installation.
Eighty enormous 850 lb.
bales are incorporated into concentric squares, nesting one inside the other.
Using bales twenty times the size of the 2011 maze offered new design
opportunities as well as stability and durability. At the perimeter, bales are
stacked to create post and lintel portals for access to magic markets. Beyond
the portals is another square called the “commitment wall” – a diaphanous
honeycomb wall of straw bales intended to challenge the visitor. At the center
of the maze resides a mystical red sphere. The installation is not a maze in
the traditional sense. Although some spaces are maze like, the installation is
more a play apparatus that remains open ended to various imaginations and
opportunities. The alternate title makes reference to the shared geometry of
the pugilist “ring” - the square circle.