American Pi(e) Project Part I
The sculptures and paintings of the American Pi(e) Project are rooted in my love of both learning and nature. Art is a tool to explore this love. An astute bystander was so taken by the creative process of the American Pi(e) Project they presented it to graduate students at the University of Massachusetts to teach and explore creative thinking in the medical field. Local primary and secondary school educators have endorsed the projects potential to engage young minds. I look forward to comments and criticism that strengthen this outcome.
Every bend and graceful line in the iron of the first sculpture, American Pi(e) 2020, as well as subsequent sculptures was created in a brief moment in 2011, when torrential floodwaters ripped one of the town’s major sewer lines and iron trestle bridge from the brook’s banks and sent it cascading over a waterfall through a deep gorge a hundred yards upstream from my home and studio.
The water’s boulder smashing iron twisting surge uprooted a full grown Sycamore tree, a portion I used in the sculpture ,The Complexity of a Moment 2017. Floodwaters transported thousands of human-made objects – American detritus : tires, plastics, toys, car parts, computer fragments, an American flag, oil and propane tanks.
Fuming above the current a strong waft of presumably hundreds of our civilizations invisible chemicals spiced up the larger mix of gasoline, sewage and fuel oil . The mangled iron trestle and sewer pipe came to rest on the other side of the brook 100 yards downstream from the studio. Discovered in the brook just downstream the following day, a human body.
By 2017, years had passed and a sustained mindfulness about this mass of tangled iron was maturing . Daily walks had brought me past the mangled iron a thousand times or more. I continued to be moved by the iron’s storm-forged curves. To a degree the beauty and precision of the bends in the iron is due to a collaboration of sorts between humans and nature and between fire and water. The strength and beauty of Bethlehem Steel and the beauty and power of water resulted in the iron transforming its’s shape to the proportional harmonies found in nature. Increasingly present were the unabridged thoughts surrounding the fact that nobody had cleaned this mess up – out of sight in a private part of the tributary.
Throughout 2019 and 2020 I continued to witness a government operating cooperatively with, according to conscientious psychiatrists with a duty to warn, a malignant narcissist leading an unabashed attempt to rule the country. The New York Times and other news feeds were reporting people from countries around the world as concerned and feeling pity for the United States of America. The trickery of the dishonest salesman masquerading as a benevolent leader was working; millions of well meaning citizens were hooked, a disastrous recipe for rage.
On my walks a particular aspect of iron lined up just so, and my mind repeatedly read this alignment as the mathematical sign for Pi.
Climbing on the mangled trestle with the thought of extracting these Pi pieces, I noticed the forged, raised capital letters, B E T H L E H E M U S A on the angle iron’s interior leg.
BETHLEHEM USA
I was raised in an agnostic and Catholic household, and in school every morning we all said the Pledge of Allegiance. Surrounded by these words and the thick twisted angle iron, thoughts and feelings manifested a unique atmosphere of associations and interesting contextual relationships. Many of the outcomes of this project are grounded in aspects of functional contextualism and relational frame theory. An uneasiness holding my muddy boot on the words, BETHLEHEM USA, and the other boot on a sewer pipe gave way to a fuller concern for the entire planet. How is it possible to strengthen global cooperation? Its no surprise that experiences like this become playgrounds of artistic expression, invitations for creative thinking and taken all together set in motion the embrace of a higher calling.
For me, the history in the word Bethlehem (love thy neighbor) and USA tangled with the mysteries of science , mathematics and of Pi. Can there be neutral symbols that bring to mind circles of compassion and personal agency that honors creativity and diversity? Are there symbols that don’t have baggage. Can these ideas grow out of a busted sanitation system? Are the solutions of the future grounded in the creative process, the relationships between mathematics, nature, science, spiritual…
Tangled in my head were ideas about America the Beautiful, Bethlehem, Jesus, religion, Bethlehem USA as an epicenter of American capitalism and American Christianity, systemic racism, Christian nationalism, the Industrial Revolution, historic labor practices and social justice issues.
In these early moments of the project I was also thinking how iron carries oxygen in our body, is believed to be a magnetic molten plasma at the core of the earth and for us is a major natural resource that built the world we live in today – one of the most polluting of all industries.
The granite in the sculptures are historic quarried foundation stone that once supported one of the numerous mills that lined crowded brooks during the industrial revolution. Now it serves as the foundation for ideas.
I once pondered the 300 lb. granite of the American Pi(e) sculpture and it’s somewhat triangular shape as a reference to the elusive and murky “ piece of the American pie.” Pretending the stone represented 300 billion dollars I concluded 1 lb. of granite would represent 1 billion dollars. The size of that pound of granite would be approximately 2”x5”x1”, imagine slicing a stick of butter a thousand times . A million dollar slice off of this little billion dollar chunk would be about the thickness of copy paper and measure about 1”x2”. The wealthiest few in the world are well on their way to 300 billion dollars, the equivalent of having a hundred million dollar balance in 3,000 different bank accounts at the same time.
I discovered this foundation stone in the middle of the brook where only about the top ten pounds was visible a foot below the surface of the water.
The completed sculpture with its combination of words and mathematical references defines layered aspects of the sculpture. Pi, a transcendental and irrational number that helps to describe circles and spheres and is applied in many aspects of modern life. The letter e, another transcendental and irrational number is connected and descriptive of growth in nature and also plays a role in equations of compound interest, money gathering , capitalism…
American Pi(e) 2020 Granite/Iron . 85”x 40”
I’m not a scientist or a mathematician and I only comprehend some of their deeper depths, however my appreciation for these fields while studying them has added to my awe of the profound complexities of life and of human passion to explore them. Euler‘s Identity, a famous equation, uses both Pi and e, and has been compared to the beauty of a Shakespearean sonnet. I read that Pi comes from the Phoenician Pe meaning “mouth of the river”. Pi and e come up frequently in describing the natural world. These works of sculpture and painting have links to a range of subjects that build on each other.
My effort and growing commitment to this project stirs the same questions. What does the Earth need from us? What should children be learning?
