BLACKVAULTfalloffstone
In a quarry in South Seattle, BLACKVAULT was cast with black granite cement shot into an earth and gravel mold not unlike the making of a swimming pool. Its black interior was troweled smoothly, but its exterior surface took its rough rock-embedded impression from its quarry mold. Weighing some twenty tons, it was then excavated, turned over and mounted on steel legs three feet above the ground. Viewers could duck under its lower open edge and stand up in its black interior. The idea was to create a very heavy earth cast and graven vault that, when turned over, would create a dense and massive lid for us replacing the otherwise limitless celestial sky above. On a dark night, it was hard to distinguish between the starless sky above and the nearly imperceptible yet defined opaque definition of the BLACKVAULT overhead. falloffstone, alternately, consisted of a human sized and scaled aluminum enclosure that launched off a boulder. A viewer could lie down in this structure floating off the edge of the rock attached only at its feet with their bodies uncovered and open to the sky. So, as is typical in my work, the two structures contrasted in being open and closed, heavy and light, earthbound and untethered, protected and vulnerable and each reversed our normal expectations.
Commissioned for the exhibition “Sculpture Inside Outside,” 1988 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.