The Coriolis Effect
Glass, stone, original text. 15”H x 34.5”W x 19”D. Museum of Northwest Art Permanent Collection "I could describe the seas of your eyes as torrential. Boreal. Aegean — if Aegean were riverine. I could open like a mouth, like French doors onto the first week of spring, like . . ."Equalize
Glass, stone, original text. 15”H x 32”W x 15”D. Private collection.
Amazing how life reverses itself — how a field of ice and snow will dissolve into crocus and lilies, how a single lucky coin can turn a man into a millionaire, how two angry lovers stopping to catch their breath — rediscover a warm, familiar kiss. And here you are, resilient as the wind — riding the wheel of fate through day and night and back again — learning to navigate disaster and luck, to face the world’s shadow and light with equal grace . . .
Fissure
“You always cut the one you love, they say. I say: hold me.”
“I am broken, yes, but broken like bread — a piece for everyone.”
“Shattered like silence, I’ve become sharper than ever, unafraid of the world’s wracks and hammers.”
“One day you too will fall from one world into another and everything — everything — will be utterly changed.”
Etc.
Watering Can
Found object, gold leaf, paint, original text. Private collection.
FRONT:
She was a goddess of weeds. Day after day she’d take the dented watering can and sprinkle the parched earth with long, cool draughts of water. Under her care, clay and sand burst into meadows of horsetail and blackberry, bindweed and nightshade. Every evening she could be seen mulching her love letters, tattered receipts, debts past due. She gave up her trusts, her old will, all her bonds to the warm, welcoming earth.
BACK:
But
the garden began to fade. She watered less and less — sometimes bare thimblefuls would fall from the can — and soon the whole great
plot wilted, turning dry and brittle and golden in the sun. Then they saw her — laughing on a swing beneath a willow, holding a single
rose in her hand, her white summer dress billowing in the easy wind. “All my tears are gone,” she cried. “And the watering can is
empty.”
My, you’ve got a beautiful A. A beautiful jay has caught your eye
I love the way your vowels sound. Sounding for all the world like love
I could stare deeply into your I’s High in the trees, in the deep, starred wood
and come to know the real U, You realize, now, is yours to command.
caress your O like a firm, round — but But what round form rides your caress, the
I digress. I love the way Way the dove and ibis fly?
your vowels sound. What What soundless howls pour
ecstasy! They shower down Down from bowers, ecstatically?
like colorful leaves on an autumn day Days tumble and fall in leaves, colorful like
and, oh! you’ve got a beautiful A! A beautiful jay. What joy and
I should sing of it with E’s Ease they bring! Could I
but I’m quickly losing ground — Ground this moment quickly in time?
(rough C’s are tossing my letters around) Around and down these letters fall, softly
I love the way your vowels sound. Sounding for all the world like love.
.Tower 1: Tell me how it happened. How, without warning — on a typical day, when the sun rose bright with possibility,
and the morning news was everything ordinary — your whole world came crashing down, and everything you ever loved shattered like glass.
Tower
2: Tell me how you refused to let the world unravel. How you began, slowly, methodically, to gather the pieces, to order
the rubble, to build anew. Tell me how you walked boldly, proudly, with a strong, new resolve, into the waking light of this fragile
world of ours.
The final line of the list of names reads “and many others whose names we will never know.”
Blown, sandblasted, acid-etched glass and acrylic-sealed glass; sandblasted, dyed and acrylic-sealed stone; original text. Black with red interior. Illuminated. 14.5”H x 14”D x 19”W. Private Collection. ". . . Oh love, what human heart, what strength of resolve can possibly survive this tearing passion . ."