The Service Project is an ongoing exploration of place, ritual, and identity. It involves a performance in which I serve tennis balls in a particular space for an extended period of time (usually 1-2 hours). Sometimes the space is of special significance (Winfield Mounds, to the right, is an ancient Native American burial ground, all but forgotten in the Western Chicago suburbs).

I love tennis. I played tennis competitively as a junior, and still enjoy playing tennis today. Hitting tennis balls is so much a part of my muscle memory that it is practically in my DNA. But I also recognize it is a sport fraught with tension: it is primarily seen as an "elitist" sport, played mostly by the upper classes. As such it is a sport which calls in question the distribution and use of resources: environmental, economic, and temporal (in this way it is not unlike art).

By hitting serves in different locations, I hope to find a way to personally commune with the spaces, to call attention to them, to perhaps even sanctify them through ritualistic action. At them same time I want to acknowledge the tensions inherent in the action.

The pun in the project title is intentional. To me, this project asks fundamental questions about the nature of art: What is the nature and purpose of art? Does art serve a purpose?  Can art be service? It is my hope that the work is paradoxical, perhaps even ironic, without being cynical.

David JP Hooker and Greg Halvorsen Schreck.
The Service Project: Winfield Mounds. Winfield, Illinois.
more work by Greg Schreck