Glacial Erratic (New England)

The location, design and function of the U.S. Land Port of Entry in Calais, Maine, inspired artist Spencer Finch to create the seven colorful drawings that hang above the public lobby's information counter. The overall shape that repeats in each drawing follows the silhouette of a large boulder that Finch encountered during a visit to New England. The boulder is a glacial erratic, a geological term for material that a glacier has carried—perhaps hundreds of miles over thousands of years—and then deposited in a new location as the ice melts.

The irregular patchworks of color that change from one drawing to the next correspond to the varied surface temperatures of the boulder at different times of day. Finch used multiple thermometers attached to the boulder’s surface to take these measurements. From left to right, the seven drawings show readings taken from morning until late afternoon. Some of the colorful shapes that repeat in multiple drawings correspond to different facets of the boulder’s surface, which were either shielded from or exposed to the warming effects of the sun as it rose and set. At its essence, Glacial Erratic (New England) celebrates the physical landscape that surrounds this important gateway to the nation, and plays with thematically related ideas of borders and boundaries, transference and transformation, climate, topographies and change.