Limnal Lacrimosa was a free public art installation in Kalispell, MT. It was open for viewing and listening hours throughout the week.
To build the exhibition, I collected snow melt and rainwater from the building's roof. Cycling water through tubing just below the ceiling, the installation evoked the feeling of rain inside the building. A large water clock, the building meditated on water-courses. The drips were caught in lachrymatory vessels while the sounds of the droplets hitting the containers echoed throughout the space. Eventually, the vessels would fill, water spilled onto the floor and the cycle repeated itself. The drips kept time.
The artwork was prompted by Kōbō Abe’s novel ‘The Woman in the Dunes’, a story about two people who must forever remove sand from a building. It is also driven by the speed of geologic change in Glacier National Park, or glacier time. Over the course of nine (Gregorian calendar) months, the exhibition space transformed several times.
Limnal Lacrimosa (of lakes, tears), 2021, Glacier National Park
Mattingly is known for her large-scale installations that address ecology like a mobile free public food forest on a barge in New York City and an education center for estuarial plants on the Thames in London. Her photographs and sculptures are represented by the Robert Mann Gallery in New York. She visited Kalispell for the first time in 2020.
Limnal Lacrimosa (of lakes, tears), 2021, Glacier National Park