A couple of decades ago I was a sculptor, making ideas out of mixed media - objects bought by people and put in their homes, yards or places of business and shown in galleries and museums. I loved making things and thinking about ideas behind them, but I rather hated the solitary life of the artist, stuck in the studio by myself for countless hours every week. I much preferred to be where the art was meant to live. Museums and galleries were ok, but I preferred parks, or living rooms, or coffee shops where the art was just hanging out watching the people scamper about their everyday lives, where it became animated as people looked and talked and preferably touched. Oh how I crave standing or sitting in such a place right now, surrounded by people and art living together.
Old sacred objects are a particular interest these days. Ultimately they are just made of stuff like us, but we imbue them with such significance, putting them in special places and even treating them like they were idols, much like we do of our own minds. What if they were looking back? We stare at them for a moment, but they stare back at us with an unwavering, omniscient gaze, looking right through our transience? What would they say of our moment in time compared to their thousands of years of witness?