An outdoor collection contends with the elements from hour to hour, season to season and over the years and decades. How a three-dimensional object appears in nature is always novel, and the more history you have with the individual object, in this case a sculpture, the more surprising is the surprise of the next encounter. The works in this collection have provided uncountable moments that are, as I’ve learned, unrepeatable. To be constantly enthralled by your environment has to be one definition of paradise. An act as simple as walking out the back door places me in a world that answers all my questions.
It's generally agreed that sculpture is three-dimensional art. Beyond this, the question of what sculpture is can miss the point of why and how it’s made and that the end product isn’t an object but an experience. Art may be the only serious game where the players change the rules from one move to the next. Is this ton and a half of concrete the emperor’s new clothing or a portal to a rich new experience? Each work in this collection is the artists answer to what sculpture is at the time of it’s making, it does not represent what they used to believe sculpture is, or what they may think it is next year, but right now, with this particular sculpture, the question is answered.
Because I’m an artist and a fabricator of public art, I know more artists than the average citizen and I bring my work home with me. The works in this collection have been acquired in a variety of ways, purchasing from a gallery, trading art, goods and services, and outright gifts from the artists, as well as acquisitions contingent on restoring the artwork. Having witnessed or been involved in the making of so many of these works, this is a collection whose provenance includes details of its production normally not recorded. To say that I’ve collected the work of friends is true. To say I’ve become friends with artists whose work I admire better describes the decades arc of this collection and the great satisfactions of my career.
The longer I live with this sculpture the more I’m reminded that just like the land they sit on, they are more borrowed than owned. The term permanent collection is always a misnomer, everything is a pop-up show, even the Louvre. I find it interesting – and think that the artists in the collection would too – that the things they made in the past and are now distant from in both time and space are still speaking and producing aesthetic experiences day and night. We understand that this is how art works, but still, it’s another thing to live continuously within its influence.
This book is a small gesture of gratitude to the artists who made my family’s residence on High Lake Avenue a work of imagination.