I'm on a Roll

This is a piece I've had in the hopper for quite awhile, made with the metal foil (previously lead, but now mostly some other kind of metal) on top of wine bottles -- working on it mostly at home (where I consume wine). I fear the good old Parisian days of wine in the studio (except at receptions, when I am the lone server of wine in the SPA building) are not a part of the Vermont scene, in my experience. I finally brought the figures I'd been working on into the studio last week, along with a load of wine tops that Dorigen Keeney had saved for me, and finished it over the last several days. I still need to figure out how to frame and/or present it. I think it needs to be covered with plexi or glass to keep the pieces in place (though they are affixed with double-sided tape to the 48" high backing board, which is covered with silver metal foil).

It's an homage to the late Roy Levin (who, among other things, made constructions and collages out of wine tops) called Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. I love the idea that we are able to have a broad and expansive view of the world only because the way has been paved for us by those who went before us (such as Roy). Even a tiny person standing on the shoulders of a giant can see farther than the giant him (or her) self. And I like this Perilous Pile of People, dangerously leaning, but not falling!

And that's something to think about, and take heart from, in this time when the problems of the world seem to be getting more intransigent, and political life more rancorous, more nasty, more depressing (well, maybe not as depressing as when George W. Bush was president, but still...). Hope is again hard to come by, but from up here at the top of the pile we can look back and see that not too long ago in this country there was slavery, lynching, and no vote for women. There were giants who helped put those evils behind us, and maybe we smaller people can continue to move the ball forward now.