"Ashes to Ashes"
2010
Oxidized SteelMount St. Mary's Park, St. Charles, Illinois
Temporary Installation for "Sculptures in the Park"
The immediate reference of "Ashes to Ashes" is to the emerald ash borer infestation that is wiping out ash trees in the Great Lakes area. I had to remove a loved ash tree a couple of years ago because it appeared that it might be infected. You can see the resemblance to my earlier sculpture "Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down". This sculpture, however, is also making a symbolic connection between the ash tree and the human condition. By playing with the poetry of small scales and how a niche transforms the object from external to existential, I am trying to place the dying ash tree (and the vulnerability that it represents) into the interior heart of the human situation. Isn't it interesting how a niche alerts us to the existential interior of an external event?
