DRIFTWOOD SERIES: RESILIENCE

Driftwood Series: Resilience
Summer 2009
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I see this piece as a tribute to our ability to endure and to survive. In the early stages of the construction, my focus was on a plant or bush shape using the driftwood and some rusty metal pieces I had selected. I had an old metal top taken from some unidentifiable container and had positioned it to represent a dead, dried-up flower pod. I chose driftwood pieces that were longer and barer looking to give the piece a starker appearance and tied them together with rusted metal strips bent like unfurling ribbon. The piece was well on its way to being a really dark piece.

Everything changed. I was digging through the driftwood pieces and came upon a bare, straight piece that was bluish-green in color. As soon as I saw the piece, I knew what it was that I wanted to say. The thought that consumed me was “no matter what”. I would use the green stick to represent a new stalk emerging from the detritus of dead branches. The piece would be about rebirth and revival … about survival. No matter what had or was to happen, this plant would make it. No matter what has or will happen to mankind … we will make it. Because, like the plant … we are resilient.

I promised one of the teachers at school that I would work with her classes on making things from found objects. I decided to hang a piece in her classroom as an example of what one might make and chose Resilience. I wanted to talk to the kids about how one aspect or piece of a sculpture can define the whole piece. By chance, my principal visited the classroom and saw the piece. She purchased the piece for her husband for his birthday. It now resides in Brattleboro.