Blooming Stars

A little spring poem to go with this work:

'BLOOMING STARS'

Blossoms floating
off their tree
rising up
to become free
and sprout again into a new star

STATEMENT:

Twenty metal trunks rooted in cement, their hundred metal branches all wrapped up in plastic, each carrying it’s white flower: six hundred and fifty plastic bags altogether, floating in the air.

All bags repurposed from previous works, all concrete bases recycled, all metal poles recuperated from their earlier shapes planted for the NSP where they lived at Broomhill for one year.

I don’t know for how long they will last this time; at some point the decay it’s inevitable, hopefully well before they will start to be taken for granted and become overlooked. To feel neglected, wouldn’t this be a valid motive to speed the process of decline?

Like a real plant this artwork needs tending, attentions, and looking after. That’s the nature of the work: to mimic nature and a metaphor for life.

My main worry? Will the work weather gracefully. I know it will transform somehow, hopefully without detracting from the perfectly beautiful surroundings but interact with it instead. Ideally creating some enjoyable moments of thoughts, reflection and conversation that art can so well provide us with. These vital acts could only nourish the artwork and its metamorphosis, making it grow stronger in purpose, deeper in concept. Then all its physical changes would not be in vain but as significant and meaningful as its imperfect beauty longing to be monitored.

I cannot help but feel that my work fits in and is perfectly complemented by the hospice environment, if not just conceptually for the idea of cycle that the work lives of.

This opportunity came at the right time of my life, when I am starting to dwell with sad thoughts about my aging parents. The harmonious energy I could breathe during my brief visit at the hospice and its carefully looked after gardens have fed my imagination making me hope for all hospices to be just like that. I came away with an uplifting and positive outlook that is already reflecting on my relationship with my parents.

Hopefully I was able to honour the place and their people and to give something back. Only the desire of making art had stop me from surrendering to the twittering of the birds and let my curiosity be lulled by the mystery of what life will bring next, fantasizing of all its forms and shapes.