The Making of The American Pi(e) Project Part II
Returning to work I remember walking into the brook toward the tangled mass of iron while contemplating atmospheric demise and the pathological dishonesty in American government.
Phoebe on Bethlehem Steel
I was messing with some eighth inch wire I’d fashioned into a seventeen-inch circle to create a dimensional representation of our 60-mile-thick atmosphere. A sensation of slow motion came over me while I was standing a few feet deep in the cooling brook as a breeze kicked up and colorful early fall leaves sprinkled down around me.
I was soon surrounded by this gathering – a convoy of color on the sun-soaked clear water calmly heading downstream like little boats. They seemed so oriented to space and their timing, taking turns, cueing each other, twirling, spinning and readying themselves to take the colors home. It made me think of the abundance, the millions and millions of good people in the world. In this experience American Pi(e) as a title for the first sculpture came to mind.
American Pi(e) 2020 has a not so puzzling connection to the iconic song American Pie. The loss of innocence and the awareness that we can no longer do to this planet whatever we want, is an important global thread for me in the sculpture’s meaning. The outcome of the loss of innocence can be spiritual growth that aligns social justice with nature to support sustainable human existence.
How do we mature as a nation and as a world to prevent humans from being the worst natural disaster in earth’s history? Evidence is mounting. What I have attempted in these sculptures is collaborating with nature.
Like most of the sculptures, American Pi(e) 2020 has a sculpted water drop – or tear drop – representing the waters of the earth. The hair thin circle inscribed on this sculpture represents the fragile thin atmosphere that protects us. It thickness is mathematically proportional to the relationship of the earth and its vulnerable atmosphere.
This fall photo is midway between the studio and the tangled iron. Ive often imagined Native Americans standing in this same spot thousands of years before me…
These sculpture’s conjure in me my experience trying to absorb a poem . If I were to write a poem about the sculpture American Pi(e) it might start with the roar of the ocean or something about primordial ooze, or granite bubbling to earth’s surface and cooling. Next maybe how iron ore and photosynthesis relate to the blue sky. Then twenty pages about how circles connect us to the world and each other through art (math, science, and religion). The circle’s infinite tangent lines spoke out to infinite connections . At the end of the poem I would search for hope. The sculptures and paintings in this project build, reflect and expand on the derived relations of the Sky Paintings ,American Pi-e 2020 and The Complexity of a Moment 2017. Overall an outpouring of what I’ve thought about throughout my life.
