Soldered brass, 30 x 32 x 24, 2017.
Two weights of line share this sculpture. Heavy tube builds corners and an open rectangular frame at the core, a cage with its sides undone. Thin gold wire passes through the frame and out of it in loops and long triangles, and one triangle reaches past the edge of the base. The tube is where the work holds still, and the wire is where it wanders. The title is the name of the first chapter of the Zhuangzi, and the method is David Smith’s drawing in space, rods bent into curves and loops that read like lines on a blank page.
The frame encloses nothing. A long straight tube crosses it on the diagonal and ends open in the air, and the wire loops and triangles spread past it on every side. The structure is a cage the line has already left. A single shallow copper dish on a short tube faces outward, the only broad surface among the lines. It catches the light, and it is the one place where the wandering line stops to take something in.
The base is a round disc with ornaments at its four points, the letters N, E, S and W. They make it a compass, and they are also the initials of the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop, so the same four letters name the directions and the place the work was made. Above them the dominant lines run oblique to the compass grid, loosened from its right angles, while all of them rest on one upright stem standing at the centre of the dial. The work leaves the bearings and keeps its base. The wandering is free, and it is plotted from home.
