Island and Mountain Sculpture

Field Mountains is inspired by previous sculptures I have made and concepts that are important to me.

Art making is a long process of being struck by abstract thoughts, acknowledging them, exploring them and combining them. I will describe some thoughts behind my island and mountain sculptures and other ideas that relate specifically to Field Mountains.

When I was invited to make this outdoor sculpture, I knew that I wanted to make a giant version of small sculptures inspired by the silhouettes of islands I have seen throughout my life on the coast of Maine. The organic, elegant shapes always remind me of animals, or the outline of human bodies. Islands on the horizon literally feel alive to me. I used to fish for cod next to an island called The White Bull. I see the mountains in Delaware County the same way. Driving through the valleys, the long, graceful lines and intriguing shapes make the forms change constantly as one moves by them. They undulate like living beings. I see an animal’s hip or back, bodies lying together, or long legs. When mountains or islands overlap one another they are like giant bodies close to one another. It is similar to seeing star constellations and thinking about how past cultures saw zodiac signs and the gods, massive above them, present each night. It is magical to me to experience the landscape take on mythical, living form, even if just conceptually.

You may see my first island sculpture in a case at luck dragon, the art supply store in Delhi. Among the additional sculptures in the series, some have a different number and orientation of island, or body forms, and they are made from a variety of materials. The contrast in the scale of the six inch and the sixty foot sculpture is fascinating to me. I am looking to create spiritual energy and for me both scales are valid and potent. The small one is ritualistic, the spirit of the idea captured in a hand- and body-sized form that suggests one might need to have it with you. It’s like lightening in a bottle. The subtlety of the shapes and the smoothness, and the feeling in your hand communicates so much. The large one is ritualistic in a wild, grand way, where the forms actually stand up and speak to the neighboring mountains.

All of my work takes form in sketches, usually in small notebooks and then with experimentation in my studio.

Buildings and Baskets

Many indigenous cultures construct lightweight buildings from strips of wood or fiber lashed woven with basketmaking techniques or lashed together. Native American sweat lodges are made with a similar frame structure as Field Mountains. . African

Viking Longship Burial Sites

When I laid out the footprint of the forms I realized how much they looked like the lines of a boat or ship, an allusion that is close to my soul. Being just a trace on the ground, I then thought it was like an archeological site, like a burial ship. Multiple cultures have had rituals of burying important people in their own ship with the supplies and tools they would need for travel to an afterlife. Vikings buried massive longship. The allusion to a ship burial added a sense of gravity to the placement of the forms because every detail is important and considered in such a ritual, including the angle to the sun and stars, the orientation toward settlements and I would assume Valhalla. I only considered the orientation of the surrounding mountain ranges, behind field and on the other side of the river, because the most spiritual aspect to me was always how my little mountains would relate and converse with their giant neighbors.

But as I erected the structure, an old friend died suddenly and tragically. She was an incredibly special and vibrant person and I could not stop thinking about her death and about the burial ship nature of this piece. I decided to dedicate Field Mountains to her, to honor and hopefully help bring her safe passage to wherever it is she is headed.

There are many other meanings and references in my mind that I will not list here (except that I also think of them as giant footprints), because meanings are infinite as are the meanings viewers will find for themselves.