BIDDEFORD — On the scrubbed and polished wooden floor of the old Pepperell Mill, there rests a nine foot wide, 72-foot long piece of stark white crochet work. It took 86,617 feet of yarn to produce and there are 1,521 rows.    

Amy Stacey Curtis worked on the piece for an hour a day, every day, for a year. It is meant to be unwound, slowly, three strands at a time, over the course of the month.

It is one of nine parts of “Time,” her sixth art installation. The show opened Saturday and will run just 99 hours, through Oct. 28, from noon to 5 p.m.

Then, it will be gone. “Time” will have passed. It is art that will be captured perhaps in memory and photograph, but otherwise lost.

It is art that is meant to be experienced: Visitors pencil in a box, much like filling in a form, upon entering and then move through a series of ideas transformed into action items. One turns the hourglass, follows the maze, and listens to the tick-tock rhythm of metronomes, keeping time.

On one piece, the participant retreats into a sound-filled closet, for three minutes if they can.

Curtis explained, “I recorded 99 people in my life, each counting 60 seconds, counting out their perception of this amount of time without use of a clock,” she said. “These recordings were merged into one sound file, and projected in the space, all 99 sounds synchronized to start at the same moment, all saying ”˜one’ simultaneously.”

The recordings meld into white noise as the participants count at different rates, and after the last person recorded finishes the statement ”˜60,’ there is a pause, and the sound begins again with a simultaneous ”˜one,’ said Curtis.

She asks participants to listen for three minutes, she said, because that is the length of time of the longest count to 60.

“When I asked this person to count from one to 60, her perception of a minute’s length of time, it took her almost three minutes to count,” said Curtis. “And when she was done she said, ”˜I think I counted too quickly.’”

Curtis, 40, of Lyman, began installation art pieces in old Maine mills in 2000, beginning with “Experience” in a Lewiston mill, moving on to “Movement” in Westbrook in 2002, “Change” in Brunswick in 2004, “Sound” in Waterville in 2006, and “Light” in Sanford in 2008. After “Time,” she’ll move on to “Space” in 2012, “Matter” in 2014 and “Retrospective Memory” in 2016.

Each installation takes 22 months from design to completion.

She chooses old mills for several reasons.

“The abandoned mill spaces, which have held my biennial work, are the best settings for this exploration of chaos, order and repetition, the overall uniformity and variability in the repeating columns, windows, beams, even the imagined repeating sounds that once filled these spaces,” she said.

“The installations echo the experiences and repetitive tasks of past workers, still present. In a way the exhibits briefly re-animate the energy of the spaces.”

The installation is located in the former shipping rooms of the old Pepperell Mill. Curtis scrubbed the floors by hand and removed plastic sheeting from windows to bring in the light.

The crocheted piece, she said, was not intended to evoke the mill’s origins of textile production, it is merely happy coincidence.

But it is a powerful coincidence, nevertheless.

“It makes it more poignant that is happens to be here,” she said.

Originally of Beverly, Mass., Curtis moved to Maine in 1986. Her interest was in math, but through the encouragement of two high school art teachers, she said her career path shifted to visual art.

She earned a master’s degree in art and psychology from Vermont College.

“At the University of Maine, I double-majored in studio art and advertising, knowing I wouldn’t make a living right off as an artist,” she said. “I am glad I made this decision when I did; I had no idea my main focus was going to be work that does not generate income. My art-making is my work, advertising is currently my job.”

— Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 or twells@journaltribune.com.