Fenceline Artifact, 1996

Fenceline Artifact is a permanent public art installation created to memorialize the agricultural life either lost or displaced by the construction of Denver International Airport (DIA), whose 53-square-mile footprint was created in the early 1990s. In preparation for the installation, artists Sherry Wiggins and Buster Simpson met with farmers who had lived and worked on the land on or near the future DIA site to discuss the agricultural history of the area. Fenceline Artifact consists of a 1000-foot-long collection of found and acquired objects (such as piles of bailing wire, a variety of farm implements, augers, rakes, harrows, and plows, in addition to a tractor, bean thresher, several feed troughs and a pivot irrigation structure) placed along a reconstructed fenceline within sight of the airport. Four small galvanized-metal farmhouses replicate and memorialize the original farmhouse landscape. The fenceline was collected and constructed along the road to DIA as a reminder to speedy travelers of the uneasy accommodation of the landscape when new inhabitants dislocate the old.