Sculpture Commission for the Hospice Center of East Texas

Artist's Statement

The sculpture titled "Towards Memory" explores how experiences from our past are remembered.  Within this sculpture are three shapes that represent types of memory.  The boulders represent the place of permanent, long-term memory.  Bronze water patterns symbolize short-term memory.  There is also random memory that arrives like breezes that move the writing quills.

The boulders protect solid facts.  This is the place of history, of our worldly accomplishments.  The bronze water patterns flow with temporal events that touched our lives at certain times and places, but they continue to drift away from us.  The quills will move with the shifting wind as if to write memories into the sky.  Those memories return in unexpected places and in unanticipated ways.  Such memories may not always be easily connected to a specific time and place and may have impacted us in ways that are initially unrecognized.  For example, music might become an important memory link to a person or event.  Maybe the scent of a certain spice or perfume evokes a memory.  When I see blue hydrangeas, I remember a friend who brought such flowers to my studio shortly before she died.  The writing quills point up to the sky and record  random memories that arrive without solicitation.  You never know where the quills will be positioned on the sculpture.

The curved bronze plate is like a scroll being unrolled and proclaimed.  The scroll will darken over time, but it is permanent.  In early mornings and late afternoons, the sun will cast shadow patterns from the sculpture.  Shadows from the water pattern will fall over the boulders, as will shadows from the stylized Braille pattern.