Meters Measured by Hand (a–f)
Ink on cotton twill tape, brass
Metal work: Amanda Shepard
2024–ongoing
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a. Meter Measured by Hand (moving water with duck disturbance, Eckernpfuhl, Berlin, Germany: 52°26'27.1"N 13°23'39.3"E, 11:28 CEST, 21 July 2021)
b. Meter Measured by Hand (roadkill on Summit Street, Iowa City, IA, USA: 41º39’2” N, 91º30’42” W, 09:02 CST, 30 April 2024)
c. Meter Measured by Hand (rock in the desert outside of Al Zubarah, Qatar: 25°41'57.3"N 51°33'21.6"E, 15:51 AST, 17 March 2023)
d. Meter Measured by Hand (stop sign on the corner of Jackson Ave and 7th Ave, Iowa City, IA, USA: 41°39’02.0”N 91°30’42.0” W, 10:13 CST, 6 May 2024)
e. Meter Measured by Hand (site of Anna Mendieta’s Silueta series, the shore of Old Man’s Creek, Union Township, IA, USA: 41°36’21.0” N 91°38’41.0” W, 12:10 CST, 10 May 2024)
f. Meter Measured by Hand (birch tree at the tree line in Kilpisjärvi, Finnish Lapland: 69°03’24.8”N 20°48’01.1”E, 15:00 EET, 26 Sep 2023)






​“For each piece in this series, the artist lays down a meter stick in the landscape and walks her left hand along the meter line, proceeding from north to south and climbing over any objects in its path. The customized tape measures correspond to the variable hand lengths of these distances. Each tape measure represents an alternative meter, one that forfeits the smooth objectivity of the standard meter to preserve instead the lived contingency of the moment of measurement. Whereas the meter stick will represent every site with the same distance—1 m—these tape measures reveal the hidden distances within each meter, recording transient features of the landscape, the surface roughness of objects, and the specific dimensions of the topographer’s body. These tape measures are therefore standardized tools for a non-standardized purpose: they can only be used to measure a single landscape, at a single moment in time, with a single human hand.”
—Bennett Sims