Painted welded steel, 68 x 48 x 48, 2006. The title takes the mantra Om Shri Ganeshaya Namah, a salutation to Ganesha, and shortens his name to ganja. The leaves in the sculpture carry the second half of the pun. They are green, long and serrated along the edges, and they curve out from a … Continue reading Om Sri Ganja
Painted steel, cast iron, brass, 66 x 23 x 21, 2006. Ganesha the Oracle sets a fully-attributed, iconographically literate Ganesha atop a municipal bollard cast for the City of Edmonton. The god carries his four canonical implements: the trident inherited from his father Shiva, the tusk broken and repurposed as a stylus for transcribing the Mahabharata, … Continue reading Ganesha the Oracle
Welded steel, 88 x 80 x 76, 2005. Abduction is a subject of motion in European sculpture. The figure in The Abduction of Liberty sits still. Liberty’s usual iconography is a set of things she holds: the torch and the tablet. This figure holds nothing. Her arms stop short, and each ends in a ring … Continue reading The Abduction of Liberty
Painted welded steel, 124 x 90 x 54, 2005. The rider in this group is the least imposing part of it. He is a small, plain figure in a broad-brimmed hat and a jacket with a red cuff, on a horse that dwarfs him. A red banner billows behind him, as large as he … Continue reading The Persistence of Tyranny
Painted welded steel, 30 x 21 x 17, 2005. The work isolates the interval between decapitation and resurrection, the act by which Ganesha achieves his final form only by first being killed. In the source narrative, most fully told in the Shiva Purana, Parvati makes the boy from her own body alone, with no involvement … Continue reading The Reawakening of Ganesha
