Observations of Snails, 2008
(excerpt from MFA Thesis)
At night, during the cool and damp months the gray cobblestone walkway in front of my rental house becomes covered with dozens of tiny, slimy fascinating snails. I had noticed the snails the year before, but it was towards the end of my second year in graduate school when I really began to observe and study them. I collected many of the empty shells the previous year and put them aside, amazed at the sheer quantity I was finding in the area surrounding my front door. I had stashed away over a hundred of them, and looking around each month I was able to collect dozens more. I had mainly considered it an interesting quirk about my home, nothing more, until one evening in April when I was sitting outside contemplating a site-specific drawing project. There I was, on my front porch, playing with an empty snail shell, and wondering what I was going to do. All of a sudden it clicked. I had a plethora of fascinating and somewhat odd snail shells right here in front of me. My site would be my home.
At night, during the cool and damp months the gray cobblestone walkway in front of my rental house becomes covered with dozens of tiny, slimy fascinating snails. I had noticed the snails the year before, but it was towards the end of my second year in graduate school when I really began to observe and study them. I collected many of the empty shells the previous year and put them aside, amazed at the sheer quantity I was finding in the area surrounding my front door. I had stashed away over a hundred of them, and looking around each month I was able to collect dozens more. I had mainly considered it an interesting quirk about my home, nothing more, until one evening in April when I was sitting outside contemplating a site-specific drawing project. There I was, on my front porch, playing with an empty snail shell, and wondering what I was going to do. All of a sudden it clicked. I had a plethora of fascinating and somewhat odd snail shells right here in front of me. My site would be my home.
Over the course of the next week I continued to collect shells and began to sanitize, seal, and create what I call my ‘fake snails.’ Using waxed linen thread and copper wire I filled the ‘fake’ snail shells with twisted, curled, and knotted elements to create my vision of a snail. I then took my ‘fake’ snails out onto the sidewalk and placed them randomly on the stones. I began to photograph the ‘fake’ snails in different configurations. I wanted to recreate or reenact the movements and interactions, replacing the living snails with my homemade ‘fake’ snails. When I began to think about documenting the living snails interacting with my ‘fake’ snails. Would they be curious about them or would they be completely uninterested? Would they behave as they normally do or would their behaviors and movements alter because of the ‘fake’ intruders into their space? Would they even come out at all?
Placing my ‘fake’ snails randomly on the stones in the early evening, I waited until midnight to begin observing the interactions between my ‘fake’ snails and the living ones. Snails are most active during the night and I wanted to have the ‘fake’ snails already in place to observe the living snails. The first night was spent mainly watching, waiting, and photographing the snails. I would sit out on the sidewalk for four to six hours observing the snails, keeping my hand out of the process, and strictly seeing how the snails behaved. Even that first night, I saw the beginnings of what was to become an obsession for me.
The snails, though slow and very much unlike us, behaved in ways similar to humans. In the broadest sense, the main things we as humans do are eat, mate, and seek shelter. It astonished me as I observed the snails that they were seeking the same things. My sidewalk is right next to my flower garden, and upon closer inspection with a flashlight I found dozens of snails crawling along the leaves, leaving a trail of slime behind them. Over the course of the night, I found that the snails on the sidewalk all eventually returned to the garden or the yard, and when I placed a leaf amongst them they made their way over to the piece of foliage and slid their way across it. Snails have rasp like teeth on the bottom of their body, or foot, which scrape the food rather than bite it. They are herbivorous, and prefer aromatic herbs and potent green leafy plants.
One of the most interesting things I observed while watching the interaction between the living snails and my ‘fake’ snails was the intensity and number of times the snails mated. Two snails would attach themselves to each other for about five to ten minutes then separate, each one then finding another snail and repeating the process. Through my research I found that snails are hermaphroditic…any snail will do. That explained a lot about how quickly the snails I observed found another snail and mated again.
I expected the living snails to be somewhat curious about the fake snails but for the most part leave them alone. I found that in actuality they behaved as though they were living snails. The living snails were curious about the fake snails, to the point that many of them attempted to mate with them. They would come up to the fake snails, move around them, and then attach themselves to them in the same manner as the living snails. They did not hold on for as long though. They very quickly moved on to other living snails, but it was interesting to see that even though I had sealed the shells with a clear lacquer and inserted other non-natural elements into them, they still somehow sensed that the snails were potential mates.
I began using graphite pencil to trace the trails of the living snails throughout the night. Because I live in a rental home, whatever material I used to draw on the stones needed to be able to be washed away. Also, since all my observations took place in the middle of the night and were only seen by flashlight, I wanted to have a record of their movements that I could view during the day. I would trace their movements around each other and across my fake snails following them until the returned to the garden or the grass. The next morning I filled in the drawn graphite lines with gouache in colors that complemented the light gray of the sidewalk. I was trying to capture a tracing or a memory of activity that no longer was there. By drawing attention to the mass of motion and action that occurred during the night, I hoped to bring a new sense of awareness to the people who viewed my photographs, hopefully causing them to pay more attention to the small and often overlooked creatures all around us.
Placing my ‘fake’ snails randomly on the stones in the early evening, I waited until midnight to begin observing the interactions between my ‘fake’ snails and the living ones. Snails are most active during the night and I wanted to have the ‘fake’ snails already in place to observe the living snails. The first night was spent mainly watching, waiting, and photographing the snails. I would sit out on the sidewalk for four to six hours observing the snails, keeping my hand out of the process, and strictly seeing how the snails behaved. Even that first night, I saw the beginnings of what was to become an obsession for me.
The snails, though slow and very much unlike us, behaved in ways similar to humans. In the broadest sense, the main things we as humans do are eat, mate, and seek shelter. It astonished me as I observed the snails that they were seeking the same things. My sidewalk is right next to my flower garden, and upon closer inspection with a flashlight I found dozens of snails crawling along the leaves, leaving a trail of slime behind them. Over the course of the night, I found that the snails on the sidewalk all eventually returned to the garden or the yard, and when I placed a leaf amongst them they made their way over to the piece of foliage and slid their way across it. Snails have rasp like teeth on the bottom of their body, or foot, which scrape the food rather than bite it. They are herbivorous, and prefer aromatic herbs and potent green leafy plants.
One of the most interesting things I observed while watching the interaction between the living snails and my ‘fake’ snails was the intensity and number of times the snails mated. Two snails would attach themselves to each other for about five to ten minutes then separate, each one then finding another snail and repeating the process. Through my research I found that snails are hermaphroditic…any snail will do. That explained a lot about how quickly the snails I observed found another snail and mated again.
I expected the living snails to be somewhat curious about the fake snails but for the most part leave them alone. I found that in actuality they behaved as though they were living snails. The living snails were curious about the fake snails, to the point that many of them attempted to mate with them. They would come up to the fake snails, move around them, and then attach themselves to them in the same manner as the living snails. They did not hold on for as long though. They very quickly moved on to other living snails, but it was interesting to see that even though I had sealed the shells with a clear lacquer and inserted other non-natural elements into them, they still somehow sensed that the snails were potential mates.
I began using graphite pencil to trace the trails of the living snails throughout the night. Because I live in a rental home, whatever material I used to draw on the stones needed to be able to be washed away. Also, since all my observations took place in the middle of the night and were only seen by flashlight, I wanted to have a record of their movements that I could view during the day. I would trace their movements around each other and across my fake snails following them until the returned to the garden or the grass. The next morning I filled in the drawn graphite lines with gouache in colors that complemented the light gray of the sidewalk. I was trying to capture a tracing or a memory of activity that no longer was there. By drawing attention to the mass of motion and action that occurred during the night, I hoped to bring a new sense of awareness to the people who viewed my photographs, hopefully causing them to pay more attention to the small and often overlooked creatures all around us.