ART! Installation at PPL. 450-million year timeline of artist Eli Nixon, forever incomplete

Final Piece* in 450-Year Timeline to be Lifted into Place at Providence Public Library 

Large paper mache whale to join 450 million years of flora and fauna built by the hands of hundreds of Modern Humans currently installed in PPL’s three-story stairwell

Beginning in January, library patrons have been witnessing 450 million years of flora and fauna taking up residence at PPL. While there are still a few tiny critters to come, the day has arrived for the largest organism (an approximately 10-12 foot long paper mache whale – we think he’s a Sperm Whale*, still unnamed) to be lifted into place in PPL’s central three-story atrium staircase.  In-process whale creation photos attached.  Project artist  Eli Nixon will be on hand to talk about the 450-Year Timeline.

Attend the installation of the 450-Million Year Timeline on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23rd at 8:30am at the Providence Public Library at 150 Empire Street in downtown Providence – at the 3-story staircase in the main entrance

This forever incomplete public sculpture project, led by artist Eli Nixon, transformed recyclables into 450 million years of organisms in an effort to grok (and make more visible) the vastness of the horseshoe crab’s time on Earth as well as the relative recentness of human existence. 

From April 2022 – January 2023, Eli worked with participants (ages 9 weeks to 83 years) to sculpt and paper mache dozens of lifeforms, through an asynchronous yet collaborative process, in which each organism was created by multiple people.  Both the process and the product attempt to decentralize colonized notions of time and ownership, upset linearity, revel in impossibility, and reckon with our enmeshment with the more-than-human world.  

This project is part of activating Eli’s illustrated proposal for a new holiday in homage to horseshoe crabs, BLOODTIDE, which is available for checkout at the Library. 

The public is invited anytime during open hours to admire the vast menagerie of paper mache creatures that have taken up residence in the central stairwell. Thanks to the Providence Dept. of Art, Culture and Tourism for project funds and to all of the people who contributed time and care to this ever-evolving effort led by Rhode Island artist, Eli Nixon (@ramshackleenterprises).  Celebrations will continue in April.

* The Building of a Whale

The whale was constructed by dozens of Modern Humans in an asynchronous collaborative process led by Eli Nixon.  This yet-to-be-named whale was born last summer from a pile of cardboard through the hands of Eli and a group of teenagers involved in “Waterways,” an art inquiry partnership between Movement Education Outdoors and New Urban Arts.

The unfinished whale was then loaded into Eli’s car (tail out of window) for the short trip to PPL where it then underwent a series of jaw and flipper surgeries and a body elongation process to help it look less like a lizard. As the whale’s body grew and adjusted, it acquired a bunch of teeth (made of newspaper) and began to roughly resemble a Sperm Whale, though nobody is trying to put too fine a point on it. 

Once the cardboard armature was complete, teens and adults taking part in Eli’s drop-in public workshops at PPL added newspaper to form lips, eyes, a blowhole, and soften some edges. Next, preschoolers from The Feinstein Child Development Center came to kick off the process of applying the whale’s paper mache skin. Whale skin efforts were completed by about a dozen other kids and adults, over the course of several months this fall and winter, who slathered on gallons of cornstarch goo and grey paper.

The whale has been resting in a storage closet eagerly awaiting the help of a lift to hang it among all the other organisms in the Library stairwell and entrance. Thursday morning, February 23, the whale is slated to swim at long last!