NEW WORK 2020
Following the recent passing of my beloved mother and father, I am creating new Art in Nature to honor and better understand my grieving process.
I spent the last 5 years intensively caring for Mom and Dad in our forest home. Now, everything I make, I make to remember them and make them proud. They brought massive joy to my life and I will honor their memory and their titanic Artistic talents by bringing the same joy to my current and future work.
JAPANESE WATER GARDEN
Spring 2020 found me with a commission to reimagine a historic Japanese Garden, originally created by the great theater designer and landscape architect, Luther Green. I removed a prominent and ponderous wooden tea bridge and introduced zen stepstone in water elements, a meditation garden seating area, and a traditional Copper roofed Garden Gate surrounding a centuries old pair of Hand Carved and forged Chinese wood and iron doors.
I have studied Japanese wooden joinery techniques and employed them in the building of the curving oak roof. I looked far and wide and found a source for 100 year old oak lumber. It was hard as steel and very difficult to fashion the sweeping shape. The Finished roof outdoors on my bench felt and looked like a mystical boat from the Greek Myth of Charon ferrying the dead across the river Styx when it appeared after the weeks long blur of my hands and tools. I spent many a 3 am thinking about what the next day's ferrying and sculpting battle would bring. I purposely did not work from a sketch but went with my instincts and strong affinity for Mr. Green's creation.
The project was a massive amount of work but I built it to last centuries and look centuries old . This I find satisfying.
Private Estate / Wilton, Ct.
LA PENSEE / THE THOUGHT
Earth tumbled native quartz and granite
I enjoy sculpture that changes its mood, its look, its feeling, depending upon your point of view. This particular stone is a flesh colored quartz that is the closest thing to human that I have ever worked with.
Stainless pins allow for complete rotation. La Pensee is a chameleon that magically stays warm in winter. Like the seasons, it is forever changing.
Home of Maya Haddow / Woodbury, Ct.
MY PARENT'S PORTAL
This stone, copper, stainless and glass door I built in July 2020 to honor my parents. It marks the base of a tall tower I have added to our family home and studio.
WINTERWOOD is our Giverney in Connecticut. And here, amidst the splendor of hundreds of wild birds I feed daily, I created a stone bird's nest, and the green flower that is my mother and the brown flower that is my father.
Many more images of WINTERWOOD will follow. It is my largest and most devoted sculpture.
CONICAL COPPER ROOF
I have always been fascinated by the amber green metal that we find in the archeological record of many ancient civilizations. It is both flexible and strong, durable and forgiving.
Here I built a simple silo tower cover to develop my skills and grow my tool set. More creative uses are to follow. Stay tuned.
WINTERWOOD MAILBOX
Bless the USPS and the work they do. Being able to buy a single stamp and put a note in the mail and send it to Anchorage, Alaska ... that's precious and beautiful. We should not take it for granted.
WINTERWOOD COPPER BIRD'S NEST
I have a family of red tailed hawks who watch over me here on the hill. I had another one of those 3 am visions this winter. It required that I make them a shelter from the storm. I can hear in the way they screech quietly, weakly after an icy, windy night. The cold and climate change shifts from day to day must tax them greatly. So I will make them a home atop the tower I am building at Winterwood.
A huge copper bird's nest. The chimney pipe that runs through it will be high enough off the nest that it will not sicken them. I will clad the pipe with a hammered copper veneer that will look like an ancient broken tree. They can huddle against it to get warm in the night.
Unlikely they will take me up on my offer. But one never knows. Just look up the story of the famous hawk in New York city named Pale Male.
The Nest will rest on 4 columns of native quartz boulders. It is made from salvaged copper pipes and thick copper wire that I used to lash the joins together. The curves I created on an old Hassfeld bender. I was told by plumbers and welders that pipe wont bend like this. I devised my own method and sort of massage bent the pipe, not using the hydraulic rams normally attached to the machine. All by hand with fulcrum force. The pipes really look like branches. They even have growth ripples on the curves. Magical discovery it was.
