Michael Petry Exhibit, Zane Bennett Contemporary Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

MICHAEL PETRY

Click here for Michael Petry: Touching the Neoclassical and the Romantic Exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum, London, England

Artist Statement

Joshua D's Wall

There, on the floor, the remains of a wall, the slippage of time over space, the melting of desire and belief with history and fact. Are they objects of nature, or simply objects of beauty? Are they man made, false gods, or possibly gifts of the gods?

There is a tale of a man called Joshua who crossed the river Jordan, who believed he was owed the land of another tribe. He had been promised their land by another god. It was not his to take but he did. He blew down the walls of their fortress with the sounds of triumphal horns.

There on the floor, pieces of glass, sparkling in the dark, rocks of silica, glass is of course always melted rock, silica, and now the floor is littered with rocks, of various beautiful colours of silica. The rocks look like the walls of the container within which they are held.

Things fall down

Belief fails

Beauty fades

Glass returns to sand

There is a plan for a field of glass stones, most likely 250 of them, each the size of a small boulder or a very large rock (12 inches wide). They take up the space of five square yards. The glass rocks might be made in Murano Italy at the Berengo factory. Each stone would be hollow. Each stone will be unique.