Painted welded steel, 84 x 36 x 36, 2006.
In the story that explains his elephant head, Ganesha begins as a gatekeeper. Parvati sets him at her door while she bathes, with orders to admit no one. Shiva, her husband, arrives and is refused, and in the Shiva Purana he strikes the boy’s head off with his trident. The elephant’s head is the replacement, and Shiva’s amends are the rule that Ganesha is honored first at every beginning. His authority over thresholds comes from having held a door against the highest power in the house.
The sculpture builds the gate around him. The god is a small seated figure in a niche at the top of a tall tower, under a fringed canopy and between twisted columns. The tower has a crenellated rim, and steps rise against one side of it. A bowl sits at the edge of the platform in front of the niche. The arrangement is a climb, an offering and then an audience with the keeper, who is enthroned and unhurried. In his hand is a trident, the weapon from the story. The guardian holds the instrument that was used on him.
“Golden Gate” is a name for the entrance to a place of wealth. John C. Frémont gave it to the strait at San Francisco in 1846, before the gold rush, after the Golden Horn, the harbor of Constantinople. A piece of steel from the Golden Gate Bridge forms the peak of the sculpture.
