Journey: Metaphors and Metamorphosis
beeswax encaustic over paper, pvc pipe, steel, blue construction foam
400 sq. ft.
Moses Lake Museum, WA. 2009
A journey through a dream-like state of metamorphosis, both Seussian and strange.
The transition of life into afterlife is a journey, which we sometimes call “Death”. But perhaps it is also a kind of birth, so that the metaphors of gestation and genesis link our corporeal bodies with our spiritual consciousness. “Journey” undertakes to bring this ephemeral experience into physical form.
Please walk this fertile journey, between suspended vessel-forms (what are these: nests, or perhaps wombs of some sort?) and through a forest of figures (are they saplings, or possibly ghostly dancers?). What mysterious, playful, strange, or transcendent encounters will we find?
The beautiful structures of bones, the resonant structures of trees and human bodies, these are the most poetic works of architecture ever created. Bones become a metaphor for the soul, as “that which continues to exist, long after the flesh has gone”.
Rock cairns are found throughout every age and culture of human history: marking important pathways, events, places, burial sites. Perhaps we will find some kind of guidance or wayposts along our own pathway, through that ultimate adventure: the metaphysical Journey which each of us will someday embark upon.
This Installation transforms an entire room into an experiential journey, suggesting the transition between life and after-life.