The Rake

Framed dimensions: 17.5" H x 23.25" W

This piece is a re-creation of a photograph, originally taken by a trail camera, of The Rake. According to urban legend, The Rake is said to be seen around the Northeastern United States and will attack humans, even if unprovoked. To be visited by The Rake is an omen of personal tragedy.

Through my own virtual hunting practice, I observe and gather text within the confines of online hunting forums with topics often clustered under rubrics such as “Do you ever get afraid in the woods?” Although these forums are undoubtedly trolled by judgmental hunters, they provide a space in which men feel comfortable sharing anonymous anecdotes of fearful experiences they have had while hunting. The process of reading posts on these forums allows me to enter a liminal, virtual space from which I emerge along with these other men—with whom I sympathize—as an aggregate, ambiguous identity. The text appropriated for this piece is composed of one such confession of fear and is limited to first-person, singular pronouns resulting in an authorial voice that is as much mine as it is the original contributor’s.

This text was incorporated along with the re-creation of the photograph that The Rake was captured in, however, as a sympathetic gesture toward these men who share their fears in the online communities of hunting forums, The Rake was omitted from the image to make the woods less of a fearful place.

A portion of the pulp used in the creation of this piece was beaten from Wrangler jeans which I associate with men who embody the archetype of hegemonic masculinity: a dominant, idealized man to which I, and the men who publicly post about their fears on hunting forums, fall victim to. Beating these articles of clothing into pulp and using it to construct a space from which frightening elements are removed is my subversive act against this social structure.

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