Welded steel, brass, 2008.
Ganesha Fireplace is a household shrine in which the fire is the offering. Ganesha is the god invoked first, at the start of any undertaking and at any threshold. The sculpture seats him at the top of the hearth, above the opening where the fire is lit. The arched opening has the form of a shrine niche, and the pierced scrollwork across it lets the flames show through like light through a screen.
In Vedic ritual the fire is Agni, the god who carries offerings to the other gods. Whatever is burned goes up to them, and the rite opens with a call on Ganesha to clear the way. Here the sequence is built into the object. Kindling is stacked in the curved cradle below, the fire burns in the middle, and the elephant-headed god sits above with his trunk raised, in the path of the smoke. The wood is the offering, the fire is its messenger, and the figure is the recipient and the doorkeeper at once.
The Romans placed the same kind of shrine beside the hearth. The lararium held the household gods, and the hearth belonged to Vesta, whose fire was never allowed to go out. A fireplace has always been the part of a house where the domestic and the sacred overlap. The sculpture states that overlap in two images, a Hindu god on top of a hearth and a hearth designed as an altar, and an evening fire in the yard is enough to perform the ritual.
