Soldered brass, 16 x 14 x 10, 2017.
Created in residence at the Hambidge Center, USA.
The title sets a grail, the most sought vessel in medieval story, beside the word “lowly,” and the sculpture holds the two together. The central vessel is squat, and its wall is plain, hammered metal with a ragged lower edge. It has none of the brilliance or height of a chalice. It stands on a domed foot and a stepped, footed base, which is how a trophy or a reliquary is presented, so the plain vessel receives the staging of the precious one.
The parts around the vessel rise. Wings lift from its flanks, large leaves spread outward, and a script letter climbs on a long stroke at the left. Each is ornate and graceful, and each is attached to the vessel without lifting it. The wings are fixed at different angles, and the lowest one sweeps downward toward the base. The cup stays heavy and low in the middle of everything that reaches upward. The grail is the thing striven for, and in this work it is the one form that does not strive.
That fits the legend, whose vessel is a humble one. In the versions where it is the cup of the Last Supper, it is a common table vessel made holy by what it held. The sculpture keeps to this tradition of modest containers that gain authority through what surrounds them and through the search for them.
