My Father's Death


In the midst of the Stones and Steel War Protests, my father, aged 94, slipped into a coma as a result of renal failure. He hung on for an amazing two weeks, during which I worked on a rock assemblage with a bit more carving and interpenetration than the simple conjunctions of fitted wild stone which I considered protests. This piece felt like an exploration of my feelings about the family of my birth.

The day my father died, I went out to my stone workbench and did a simple piece of a single stone hung by chain in the carved gullet of another stone.

I have no idea if these pieces communicate to others my feelings of personal conflict and resolution. I have no idea if others would pick up from the War Protests the sense of intense resistance to destruction which I felt in doing them. In dealing with non-objective sculpture, it is probably enough that the piece capture, hold and communicate a sense of psychic energy. The meaning of that energy may well be irrelevant to the viewer, if it at least comes through the piece.