Winner of ARTSCAPE 2010
Melt is a series of five boats, suspended in the trees, above the ground. This was a comment on the expected sea level rising due to global warming and the millions of people who would be displaced by the submersion of land.
For several years now I have used the boat as metaphor to express the human condition – Immigration, human physicality, loss. The symbol of the boat as both hope and fear and its relevance to our contemporary existence.
Originally based on a poem by Michael Chitwood. The black boats appear as coffins floating out to sea.
The Coffins
Two days into the flood
they appear, moored against
a roof eave or bobbing caught
in the crowns of drowned trees.
Like fancy life boats
from an adventurer’s flag ship,
brass plating and grips,
walnut sheen, scroll work,
they slip through the understory
on this brief, bad river.
What have they discovered
and come back to account?
Or is this the beginning
of the marvelous voyage
and they plan never to return?
