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Michael Verdon is creating a 20-foot handcrafted pagoda, which becomes a canvas for the people’s stories of remembrance, loss and healing.
At 8:30 p.m. on May 8, those stories and struggles will be let go as the structure transforms into ash. It’s called “The Temple of Transformance,” and it will burn as it floats on Mason Pond.
The event—permitted and approved—is another installation of the George Mason University senior’s “transformative art” series in which Verdon leads a project that creates space for reflection and change, and then burns it, transforming the contents—and perhaps their significance—to ash. He calls his work “healing structures” and “sacred fragments.”
It takes a community to build these structures and hundreds of hours of volunteer work, he says. Verdon leads the team and manages the projects down to the finest details, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I wouldn’t want to make these by myself, even if I could,” he says. “It is a communal experience from beginning to end. It means more for me to have friends, new and old, there working together.”
The burning pagoda—which is part of a flotilla of platforms Verdon will float on the pond—is the senior project for the 33-year-old art and visual technology major, who has a concentration in sculpture and minors in social justice and conflict analysis and resolution.
Verdon says he doesn’t much care for art that just sits in a gallery. So he doesn’t mind erasing his work from the world as long as it elevates the conversation.
“I don’t feel an art object is going to change the world,” he explains. “Me making one thing, that’s not a reasonable expectation. I can only make someone think differently about the one thing.”
Verdon came to Mason after nine years in the Air Force and a career as a computer programmer for the military and civilian companies, and as a student at Northern Virginia Community College. It wasn’t until he got to Mason in 2010, and specifically, the Art and Design Building on the Fairfax Campus, that he realized programming computers was not his passion—art was.
And when he took a class with Professor Richard Rubenstein of Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, he realized he could combine art with social change.
“I started getting heavier into the conflict analysis program and these ideas of mediation and peace building, things that can actually impact peoples’ lives,” he says. “I went to the class where I was the only BFA student and introduced myself as an artist who does sculpture. Rich said, ‘That’s important, that’s part of the solution. Together these avenues can create change.’”
“I love his imagination,” says Rubenstein, who takes no credit for Verdon’s inspiration. “He was already doing this before he came to us.”
In fact, Verdon is on the leading edge of a new movement.
“Actually, what he’s doing is a growing trend in the field,” say Rubenstein.
The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, he says, is beginning the process to fund an artist in residence who will translate the school’s ideals into a visual medium.
As for the ignition of “The Temple of Transformance,” Mason director of safety and emergency management David Farris says the pagoda is good to go…up in flames.
“Michael worked with the [campus] Environmental Health and Safety Office to ensure property safety precautions were taken and the permits are completed,” he says. “It will be a good show.”
Write to Buzz McClain at [email protected]
Photo Credit: Craig Bisacre
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