Dreaming Seas of Wheat

Dreaming Seas of Wheat , 1985  was a series of 25 inflatable “stalks” “planted” in a grid of 5×5 each stalk was 25’ tall and about 2 feet in diameter.  The piece was installed in Bullough’s Pond in Newton, Massachusetts first then in the lagoon at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.  Filled with helium, the stalks moved in the wind, imitating in a fanciful way, the opening scene of Werner Herzog’s film “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” which  completely captured my imagination with a long single shot of a wheat field moving like the ripples of waves on  the sea while the words  were subtitled:

“Don’t you hear that horrible screaming all around you? That screaming men call silence.” [from The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser]