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.

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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.

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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?

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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”.

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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.

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This Installation transforms an entire room into an experiential journey, suggesting the transition between life and after-life.