Potential sites for Earth Day installation

arch2.jpg  arch1.jpg  roof1.jpg  tree.jpg

There are some interesting choices at the mall. I particularly like the oak tree idea, as it ties in to the reading I’ve been doing on alchemy. Alternatively I have been imagining a teardrop made of the bottles suspended from an archway or roof. 

The water bottle theme got me thinking about the elements, air, earth, fire and water. How could I express them all in the piece? I realized that everyone associates the ubiquitous transparent bottle with water, fire can be expressed by using ashes, earth by using stones, and air is ever present and contained in the bottles. So if each bottle contains a quantity of each element, suspended from the tree at at a uniform height we have the plane of this earth, the celestial world is above the elements,  and below them the lower world.

The oak tree becomes the axis mundi with its roots in the underworld, its branches in the heavens. 

I dreamed about a tree with bottles hanging from it on the same plane about a year ago, and made a sketch in my book. I guess this is what it was for. 

About pearce

Michael Pearce is an artist, writer, and professor of art. He is the author of "Art in the Age of Emergence."
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