Philip Edward Harding

The Wall of Infinite Diversity

The Wall; 2022 version with approximately 770 six foot long ropes and cords sorted by color.

The Wall; 2024 version with approximately 1,400 unsorted ropes and cords.

I would like to make something able to confront big issues like climate change, racism, and rising fascism. Instead, feeling depressed and overwhelmed, I have withdrawn into the studio to make work that is small, intimate, and personal. The seeds of the project were a series of nine cords I twisted up from yarn remnants in the 1980s. I liked the results so much that I started saving up yarn from yard sales and thrift stores but then left it on the back burner. Finally, in 2020, while the world was in lock down, I unpacked the yarn and built a small rope making machine. It wasn’t just the lock down but the years leading up to it had been hard and I needed a project that gave me some mental and emotional space as I processed grief. It felt nice to make something physical, tactile, and intuitively aesthetic, without the kind of intellectual or conceptual baggage I normally carry. As I spun yarns into ropes there was something about the process that I found both engaging and therapeutic. In just a few hours I could have a small success – a finished rope whose character I found interesting and often beautiful. I had no use for ropes or cords, so I justified them as art for its own sake, even as I obsessively kept making more. As the collection grew it started feeling like it could amount to something else, unplanned and bigger.

Random 13 foot wide section of The Wall, packed roughly 14 ropes and cords per linear feet of wall.

Each rope I make ends up about 30 feet long. From that, I set aside a foot long piece for a sort of catalog, or journal of rope samples, and a six foot piece for what I started referring to as the large curtain. I initially set aside a four foot piece as well, and in 2022 I took those, or most of them, and mounted them on a series of fourteen stretched canvas panels. (See here.) When I displayed the panels at my local library I was pleasantly surprised how people of all ages would reach out and touch the ropes, often pointing out to each other which were their favorites. The observation impressed me by just how accessible fiber art could be.

I live in a conservative city where too many people embrace the language of racism and exclusion. I'm tempted to ask the rhetorical question, "Which rope do you hate?" or "Which ropes should be excluded?" There are plenty that seem insufficiently beautiful. Some appear dingy, unwashed or a bit too ragged with too many knots and loose ends. It might be tempting to make a wall or curtain out of only the best and most beautiful ropes, but there is something especially impactful when seeing them all together, complementing and contrasting each other. Collectively they form something so big it is hard to ignore. It may not confront racism, but I would like to think it affirms diversity.

Random selections, widely spaced, with white and black backgrounds

I am still exploring the best way to present them. In 2022 I sorted them like a spectrum. The spectrum made an interesting picture but the character of individual ropes gets lost, even when up close, if the ropes are segregated by color. The next picture has even more ropes, but mixed up. In both pictures, the ropes are placed close together, about 14 ropes and cords per foot. But for the individual character of each rope to really stand out it helps to leave space between them. Packed tight the full set will cover almost 100 linear feet of wall. Spaced about seven or eight ropes per foot they can cover 180 feet of wall or more. I've also photographed them against both black and white backgrounds to compare the impact. I prefer black, but I accept that most galleries are white.

I am currently looking for somewhere to install the set. As a freestanding wall I envision them set up as a double layered wall roughly 50 feet long. I like the idea of a wall with human scale, that is soft and permeable, as opposed to a high border wall that keeps "the other" out.

Depending on the space, the ropes could also be installed as a hall, with ropes blanketing the walls. Given the right venue, I could even imagine creating a hanging forest with a thousand long ropes hanging down from a ceiling, spaced about a foot or two apart, so that visitors can't help but brush up against them. Another idea is the creation of a labyrinth, with corridors of hanging ropes punctuated at key points with the larger pole mounted sets. The maze could culminate in a forest, or before a large wall with sets of ropes rising from floor to ceiling like the ribs of temple columns, shafts of a bamboo grove, or the trunks of tall trees. Such installations are beyond what I can do on my own, but depending on the venue they could create the opportunity to work with a team, perhaps making a community project or event out of it.

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