Page 25 - MyAmerica_Gordon_F_Sander

Library Slope (2004) Couple, Libe Slope (1968)

Most American colleges and universities exist in their own separate space. My
alma mater, Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, as a result of a combination
of factors, including its quixotic history, its relatively large size, and, above all,
its location on a plateau overlooking scenic Lake Cayuga, exists in its own zone,
at once bucolic, romantic, desolating, and - as I soon discovered after I first
arrived on its storied campus in September, 1968—infinitely photogenic.
The Cornell I found when I returned to its ivied bosom in 2002, to be artist in
residence was vastly different from the one I had left after I graduated in 1973.
In some ways it was better: better food, more buses, more women; in some
ways, worse…
However the things that I had loved about Cornell were still visibly, breathtakingly,
there: the couples sitting on Libe Slope; the miraculousness of Beebe Lake on
a perfect fall day. The sense of separateness, and yes, of wonderment—of far
aboveness, you might say…”

- from the catalog for my exhibit “The Cornell Zone” Fine Arts Library, Cornell
(2008) Couple, Libe Slope (2008)

23 24