Deanna Pindell
Transient Gift

2010
installation

Transient Gift is a meditative sanctuary, a quietly beautiful public installation which invites deep reflection on the transience of water and life. All creatures on the earth share the same water: it flows past us across the soil, rises into the clouds over us, rains down upon us. We share this same water with our ancestors and our great grand-children; no new water is ever created.
A 1000 square-foot meadow overlooking the Salish Sea encompasses four altar-like pedestals surrounding a central analemma sundial. Underneath the meadow lies a two million-gallon concrete cistern, the water storage built 100 years ago for this community. Now empty, the cistern is a historic landmark in Fort Worden State Park, WA, USA, and fresh water is piped in from 26 miles away.
The hours-markers of the sundial are clear acrylic tubing, filled with water. The analemma form of the sundial allows a person to stand as the gnomon, and their shadow will point toward the hours-markers, thus giving the true solar time based on the earth’s relationship to the sun (different than the cesium time of modern society).

Link to the project