21.07.03: Rosette #1 

These metal sculptures are a collaborative project with an artist Clifford Peterson in Taleamor Park Residency. Inspired by Clifford's drawings, I reinterpreted his works and made a hanging sculpture talking about "life" and "relationships." The broken and lost roads seem disconnected, but at some point, they are connected. Rusty metals are over 100 years old, none of which are the same, and they each have their own story and time.

"When you look up at the pieces of metal, it's like looking at the clouds that are floating aimlessly." Textile artist Lisa Lee Peterson said.

I once asked Clifford to write a short poem on "Life." This was the poem he wrote.
"Rainy July day / Putting in the new window / A moth stuck inside"

And this was what I wrote. "Connected, but disconnected / The roads break and meet / Making a beautiful sound"

Here, I found an interesting difference in the way we think about life. If I focused more on the broader meaning of life, Clifford focused more on being alive in the vivid present.
Maybe, life is not about a straight line that constantly moves forward, but about keeping my place, balancing between moving forward and backward. To be balanced, I think, we should stay true to the present.

For the other sculptures, I collected discarded metal scraps. Metal pieces from different places are stitched together to support each other, and pieces separated from one plate are re-stitched together to form a community. There is an order within disorder, connection within disconnection, and completeness within incompleteness. I like how these opposite attributes coexist in one.
An American writer Rebecca Solnit once said in her book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, "To be lost is to be fully present and to be present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery." This collaboration is meaningful in that it shows the different paths of two people at other points in their lives have walked and their thoughts on "life."