To put the visitor in relative proximity to Emily Dickinson at work, Francis Cape has created a secluded, screened space within the gallery. The relationship between the desk, the windows and the framed photograph of a barren field in February is carefully considered. The installation is located in a corner to frame a western view toward the Hudson that will dramatically change as the spring leaves burst forth on the trees below. Like the landscape in Dickinson’s poem, the structures visible from the north window, the back steps, the retaining wall and pergola, and Wave Hill House beyond, “never stir at all –“. Initially drawn to Dickinson’s struggles with her absent god, Cape explored her relationship to both god and nature in creating this project.

Francis Cape has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions at Grimm/Rosenfeld, Munich, Germany; the Richard and Dolly Maas Gallery, SUNY Purchase, Purchase, NY; St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis, MO; and the Eli Marsh Gallery at Amherst College, Amherst, MA. He engaged Dickinson in an earlier project 258 Main Street, which was included in Floor to Ceiling at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT. Last year at Murray Guy in New York, Cape exhibited Waterline, an installation of photographs taken two months after Hurricane Katrina during a walk through the Gentilly and St. Roch neighborhoods in New Orleans. The photographs hang above a wainscot of painted paneling to underscore the constant presence of the flood waterline on the uninhabited homes in each image. He is the recipient of an award from The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. After apprenticing to a wood carver, he earned his BFA at City and Guilds London Art School and his MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London, England. More information can be found at www.franciscape.com.