Beckett’s Maze: Go On

On view until it fades

Photo credit Drone Ability

Site-specific Ephemeral Environmental Installation
By Robin Crocker
Located in the Jamestown Arts Center parking lot, 45 feet in diameter

Opening Friday, June 12th!
On view until it fades.
No Appointment Needed.
Please maintain social distancing while interacting with the installation.

Artist Robin Crocker is creating a painted maze based on the ancient labyrinth or maze found in Chartres Cathedral, circa 1200, for the Jamestown Arts Center parking lot. The maze is intended to be walked. Participants follow the convoluted pathway as it winds to the center. The maze is an invitation to enjoy a walking meditation, an existential journey to one’s core.  Her color choices (purple, black, and gold) express the sacred nature of the experience.

In the design, Crocker incorporates the closing text from Samuel Beckett’s novel, The Unnameable – “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”  “You must go on” marks the entrance into the maze. Gold medallions are spaced 6 feet apart (to ensure social distancing while interacting with the installation) stenciled alternately with “I can’t go on” and “I’ll go on” dotting the pathway through the maze.

In celebration of Community, the maze is a destination, a shared space that invites each member of the community to enter and experience a private navigation to the center; a metaphor for one’s journey through life. The sorrow and uncertainty of life –  “I can’t go on”, with the joy, acceptance, and inevitability of life – “I’ll go on” are passed over like a rhythmic chant. The maze inspires the contemplation of opposites as one considers the physical and spiritual journey, life and death, the solitary self in relation to one’s membership in community.

Crocker states: “Paradoxically, we must retreat from community to aid community right now. In the midst of this global pandemic, faced with deeply rooted social injustice and political divide, now is a crucial time to contemplate our role, our impact, as part of this whole. A journey through Beckett’s Maze offers an opportunity for this much needed introspection.”

Robin Crocker is a Bristol, Rhode Island, based artist working with written text to create a sculptural experience. Merging form with idea, the ancient labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral with Samuel Beckett’s deeply self-conscious musings about consciousness, she invites the viewer to become a participant. One-time head of the Patina Department for the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute for Sculpture, Robin draws upon her surface finishing expertise to paint Beckett’s Maze: Go On, for the Jamestown Arts Center. Robin’s work appears courtesy of the Atelier Newport.