When Stella and I ran over to Uarts we, too, were stopped in our tracks by Shannon Bowser’s untitled wiggly concrete in the window. Libby’s right (see post immediately below), it’s absolutely cosmic and lovely. Maybe even underwater cosmic? (pictured at top is jellyfish from the Monterey Aquarium.)I’m always for having a little fun with my art, so when I realized that the one rock seemingly not hurtling through space would line up with Stella’s body approximately where her heart was I snapped away.
The floating, wiggling rock, like a heart aflame out of old religious iconography, brings one more reading to an openly evocative work. I am the cosmos, and the cosmos is me.
Bowser, a former Vox Popper, Pew finalist and Independence Foundation fellow, has been merging cast rocks and springs for many years. See her nice website for more images and information. She must have made an entire village of concrete houses on springs by now, and at least one wiggly car that was like a honeymooner’s dream — and nightmare.
The work’s combination of simple means and metaphorical meaning about life’s fragility never ceases to please.
