Veil

For the South Haven Cemetery, artists Brendan McGillicuddy & Jeffrey Riedl have proposed Veil, a large fabric-like lattice of airy line work appearing to billow from the South Haven Cemetery Service Building’s rectilinear geometry. 

The artwork’s delicacy and flow elegantly complements the design and materials of the building it inhabits, and is empathetic to the sensitive context of the cemetery. 

The artists say, ​“Veil is essentially a sculpture seen as a two dimensional depiction. It is a single moment in time taken from an animated digital model of cloth subjected to wind and gravity algorithms. It is both material and immaterial; a picture of an entity in another realm”.

The imagery evokes medieval Vanitas, or memento mori paintings, which reflect on mortality, the vanity of life, and transient nature of existence. Cloth, or empty clothing, is used to represent absence and loss.

Veil represents loss in a non-religious way; ​“A veil is used to separate the mourning from the day. Those behind the veil are hidden, their grief private, personal and safe. The veil is a symbol associated with death and dying, universal and ancient, symbolic but non-denominational. As a metaphor it can be thought of as a filter between life and death; the eyes of the living on one side and those remembered beyond its edge”.