Earth Body I – Spring Transmission
Arteles, Haukijärvi, Finland
The sculpture has fallen.
It did not reach its first full cycle standing. Now, it has begun its slow return to the ground from which it was shaped.
There’s a quiet truth behind this moment, a reminder that this was always part of its unfolding.
This new phase is now the start of its next chapter and a reminder of the laws of entropy. The work was never meant to resist time. It was meant to be in conversation with it. I don’t see the fall as a failure. It is a continuation. The sculpture is no longer a form, but a process again.
other realisations to note:
- permanence is not proof of value
- all form is only a brief moment in a longer unfolding
- ephemerality is not a loss, but a mode
- a sculpture can live even as it disappears
The seasons shape these journeys far more than I ever could. Rivers, rain, ice, snow, and sun have all collaborated with me in ways beyond anything I could script. Through their work, I’ve come to see disintegration as a deeply poetic part of each story.
Now I look forward to seeing the evolution of the moss and lichen as the forest eats it back up and reclaims the sculpture as part of the hill once more.
photographed May 29, 2024
photographed Jan 25, 2024
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Earth Body I – Winter Transmission
Arteles, Haukijärvi, Finland
This week I received an update from the forest - the site of Earth Body I, made in May 2024. Eight months on, the sculpture remains, standing beneath a layer snow, held in suspension and frozen in a cryogenic state of stillness.
A vertical crack has formed along one side. It's unclear whether this is the result of frost or slow internal shifts over time. Moss is beginning to gather on the belly. Scattered across the surface are shallow craters, signs of erosion or quiet impacts.
There’s a strange sense of distance in seeing it like this, as though receiving postcards from a long lost child. What remains unknown is whether the sculpture will endure the thaw. Spring will be the real test.