Instrument Implement presents an ongoing investigation of Walla Walla Bound - Buster Simpson's proposed public art commission project for the Walla Walla Penitentiary and the City of Walla Walla, Washington. The project is to be sited along an urban section of Mill Creek, a small tributary of the Columbia River that flows through the city. Following Simpson's fascination with natural and man-made systems surrounding water, this project focuses on a concrete channel in need of major habitat and engineering revisions. The Sheehan Gallery will serve as a public laboratory to test and explore various aspects of his proposal and the exhibition will provide rare insight to how a major public art work comes into being.
The exhibition will be a site for generating material for two parts of Simpson's proposal. The first, titled Poetic License, is a series of words composed for license plates. These words will be stamped at the Walla Walla Penitentiary license plate facility, and eventually be installed along the imprisoned urban sections of Mill Creek. The second part, titled Instrument Implement, is comprised of plowing discs, each of which have a unique bell sound. This piece will serve as the town campanile, and will be sited above a resonating focal point along a covered section of Mill Creek in downtown Walla Walla, Washington. Visitors to the gallery are invited to submit words as well as musical compositions for the bells.
