The Architectural Rose is a wall mounted sculpture produced in 2001 as a piece for display at the Festival of Arts in Laguna. It mounts upon two brackets which are 16 inches apart. The sculpture has the dimensions of 48" by 48" and is about 9" from the wall. It's weight is approximately 80 lb.
The design motivation for this sculpture was stimulated by the 'Hopi Sun' icon. Great care was taken to maintain the 90 degree accuracy element of the design. The human eye has the ability to perceive certain angles with precision. The sculpture is completely made from steel. Concrete reinforcing rod, shovels and circular saw blades provide identifiable found objects. Certain elements have been burnished upon the suggestion of artist Molly Blank. This burnish enhances the definition of the design.
San Mateo and the Serpent
Another unrelated piece which was created earlier and shown at the 2003 Festival of Arts was 'San Mateo and the Serpent'.
It is another assemblage of 'found objects'. In this case it is entirely composed of pre-shaped square steel bar that I found while hiking in San Mateo Creek after a particularly violent wash-out. I was attracted to this metal because it was very unusual in the surface texture. There were long diamond shaped pressed upon the rusted square profile steel rod. I collected these short scraps and took them back to my studio. There was also a strange cork-screw shape I could not identify. Clearly it was an earth auger of some kind.
Back at the studio, I started to assemble them in an abstract manner. The best fit composition resulted in the wall sculpture you see below. The assemblage reminded me of abstract line drawings of figures. I saw a story unfolding within the lines. The figure in the center had banished the dangerous snake which had brought fear to the people of the land. The banishment sanctified the site. This type of interpretation of abstract forms is not unlike the reading of tea leaves or inkblots. It is a projection of a human mentality upon inantimate objects. Not only the iron bars where found and assembled but the interpretation and mythology was invented to bring life and history to the sculpture. It could just as easily been called 'Found Steel Bars'.
The real history is that there was an old concrete bridge which spanned the flowing San Mateo Creek. When it was demolished to make room for the 'old Pacific Coast Highway' some of the steel concrete reinforcing rods remained in the creek bottom. This type of rebar is no longer used, now round bar with circumferential rings has better holding power. The earth auger is for a barbed wire 'perimeter' used to guard encampments in wartime. San Mateo Creek is at the western corrner of Camp Pendelton.
Thus the true reality and artistic interpretation come together in a logical explanation.
