Alabaster and Wood
28x13x10 in.
2021
28x13x10 in.
2021
This sculpture started as an abstract exploration of form. It took shape organically, through a process called “direct carving”. I chased the shape for a while, and it took me many places. It begged for a hole, then another. Finally, I cornered its final expression, a surface folding up on itself in exciting ways.
Towards the end of this process, I remembered that I had an owl as a child. I didn’t really “have” it, it lived with us for a couple of days. My grandfather found it in the grass, cowering between his bee hives. It must have been injured. He wrapped it in his coat and brought it home to heal. It was a strange and wild creature - soft, but equipped to kill. Her huge yellow eyes seemed to see everything at once, yet she was oblivious to my excitement in her presence.
My grandparents lived in a city that, a couple of centuries ago, was the home of rival father-and-son mathematicians. They were larger than life and left a significant imprint on the world of mathematics and their small Transylvanian town. To spite his father’s wishes, the younger imagined a flavor of geometry where a straight line has an infinite number of parallel companions that skewer any point that doesn't belong to it.
The sculpture reminds me of an owl that abides by the laws of hyperbolic geometry. That’s how it got its name.
