Soldered brass, 21 x 12 x 8, 2017
The oldest stories honour theft. Jason takes the golden fleece, Heracles the golden apples, Jack the golden eggs. In each the prize belongs to an other, and the taking is the hero’s deed. The sculpture presents such a scene as a trophy. Its title is the name of the award proposed in Hal Niedzviecki’s 2017 editorial “Winning the Appropriation Prize” in Write.
A golden orb hangs in the talons of a raptor with raised wings. A man grasps the bird to halt its escape and take the orb for himself. The stories keep the roles apart, with one holder and one thief, and the sculpture doesn’t. The bird’s grip on the orb and its lift away read as a thief in flight. The man is then a thief of a thief, or a claimant retrieving what was his. The orb carries no mark of an owner, so the sculpture gives no ground for deciding which. Whoever ends up holding it will have taken it, and the prize of the title is the spoil and the reward for taking it.
The man stands at the edge of an alphabet block, one foot planted and the other leg flung back, in danger of being carried off his base. Clouds hold the block aloft. The block carries the letters in pairs, A and B, C and D, E and F, G and H, each matched with a picture. Our alphabet, used by countless cultures, descends from Phoenician through Greek to Latin, each people taking the signs of the last and making them its own.
