Story
"It struck me that each of these pieces of material could represent a distinct creature in an elegant herd, and as I took a pair of tin snips to the first one I grabbed, angling carefully to begin the initial suggestion of a stately moose, Mountain Meadow was born."
The inspiration for this piece arrived somewhat by happenstance. I was moving an overloaded bin of salvaged metal from one side of my workshop to the other; naturally, the topmost layer slid off like snow in an avalanche, scattering oblong pieces of rescued scrap – cookie tins, serving platters, coffee cans and road signs – across the floor. I took in the beauty of this unexpected mess: all different colors and shapes intermingled and overlapping, moving together towards the door like they had someplace to be. It struck me that each of these pieces of material could represent a distinct creature in an elegant herd, and as I took a pair of tin snips to the first one I grabbed, angling carefully to begin the initial suggestion of a stately moose, Mountain Meadow was born.
Each piece of antique metal - from vintage tea tin to salvaged barn siding - was collected from an abandoned space throughout the western landscape. I have gleaned old barns, abandoned ranch houses, and forgotten hunting camps deep in the woods to collect the salvaged materials used in this work. Each individual elk, moose and deer in this grid was cut from a distinct piece of ephemera, which carries its own history and story.
The herd marches across a landscape that invites the imagination to run wild: tiny specks of vintage sheet music peek through a layer of white to offer the suggestion of a topographic feature or the whisper of a familiar tune in the ear.
