Pease Grain Tower

1997  Burlington, VT
Site installation on Burlington Waterfront
Principal: Michael Wisniewski        

On 40 acres of undeveloped, post industrial Burlington waterfront landscape Hannah Dennison organized a group of artists, dancers, musicians and sundry folk to spend one Sunday a month for a year creating artistic interventions exploring history, nature and place.  My site was the Pease Grain Tower, all that was left of a granary that burned in the 1980's;  a place I found achingly beautiful as a remnant of a history almost gone.  Using mostly detritus found in the landscape, each month we worked with the grain of the structure and spaces for a different intervention.  Most were architectural but some were performances with dancers and music, there was even a garden.  

At the conclusion Hannah, Mark Taylor and myself made proposals for saving and reusing the Tower as a vital place on the waterfront but they did not find favor with the forces that be and it was demolished in 2000.  The proposals were summarized on a plaque set on the site.  Wonderful computer graphics by Mark Taylor.  

My main idea referenced the history of the Tower.  Once grain was brought from far flung places to the Tower and then redistributed.  I proposed setting up web cams around the state and constructing a viewing pavilion for people to come to the Tower and see what was happening around the state.  Information instead of grain would be brought from far flung places and then redistributed.