St Cloud Hill
St. Cloud Hill, September, 2017
St Cloud Hill is a landscape that embodies the dynamics of nature, history, and commerce that seem to define Nashville as I know it. It's almost as if Ft Negley's elevation is testament to the depth of competing claims to its site. By daylight, rung by highways and train lines, the old Sounds stadium might more aptly be called Ft Neglect, but by night the hill and surrounding lots offer a rare wide darkness and quietness to the city's cloying irradiant skyline. I pass the hill everyday commuting to work. The ruins are a WPA recreation. Even fully recreated it’s more downtown Nashboro than colosseum. But this slumbering shoulder rising south of city center is special in its proximity and separateness from downtown right next door.
It is amazing how wonderfully uncontrollable it is to make an on-site drawing by comparison to working in the crucible of the studio. The unpredictability shakes me up in a positive way and let’s me slowly see things that had become routinely unseen. This process is about paying attention and being paid back in moments of awareness. I am grateful for everything I learn in just a simple hour spent looking at the world while drawing. I am lucky for the days I have spent looking at and across this beautiful complicated hillock.
I wanted to work on the site in large part because of the fight for its future. I watched sounds games there with my kids, knew the history and it bothered me that the site was pitched by developers as derelict. I wish I had gotten to work before they cleared out the camps from the NE side.
