These two works of sculpture are companion pieces, the key figures being a muse playing her violin and a young sailor touched by her playing. Wanderlust, which some say is a desire for perfect home, is the theme. Before giving an explanation of the metaphors used, I would say right off that these pieces were a work of free association that had its roots in Bob Dylen’s “Beyond the Horizon” lyrics.
The cityscape with the young sailor’s face in the foreground contains a small window (upper right) in which the muse sits with her back to us playing a violin. All who hear her in that city begin to long for elsewhere; all would fly if they could, including the poor soul who must stay at his job in the ticket booth. Her playing puts hearers under a spell that lures them with its moonshine as each face becomes, like hers, a quarter moon. All homes in that city have become shadow homes or, at best, dim hints of home. Moonstruck, they leave home in search of home. Their faces have been set; the times will come, the station clock is telling them so.
A close-up frontal view of the muse is given in the companion sculpture. She sits in the very same window, the one above the train station; however, there is no city at her back. The city has disappeared from every spellbound eye and been replaced by a bright but perilous sea in which the sailor, by way of her playing, now finds himself. The fruit and flowers to her left symbolize the power and sweetness of her playing. The three fish at her knee symbolize nothing. They just fit nicely in the foreground of the tiny seascape. Wanderlust of course involves travel, so these two pieces give us a car, truck, train, boat, and migrating geese high in a windy sky.
Miniaturizing, or putting in a nutshell, big realities (sugar eggs containing landscapes, bottles containing ships, etc.) is something people have always done. I have done something like that here not knowing for sure why I liked doing it.
