It Takes a Village

This work is currently installed at Norwalk Community College in Ct.  It Takes a Village is its centerpiece and consists of a hanging vine and ceramic houses in sand.  This piece was originally conceived 5 years ago by my good friend artist and educator Denise Minnerly.  With the idea of doing a piece about place and where we live, she went into schools, homeless shelters, and mental institutions with clay and asked participants to make their idea of home.  Concurrently, I had been working with beaver sticks and vines on pieces about the interconnectedness of nature and man.  We joined forced on this project and made the vine sculpture for It takes a Village together.

The long clay and acrylic piece behind It Takes a Village is Earth Variations (reconfigured).  Originally done as a 90" x 160" rectangle--it is 12 separate panels--is reconfigured for the space as 40" x 360".  The vine piece Au Privave is created from a single vine I found in the CT woodlands. The last piece, Gumbo Variations, is 40" x 80".