An installation for Exposed, Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition, Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, VT, July - October 1997
Purse combined found organic material and sawn oak. The sculpture was suspended from the limb of a giant silver maple in the middle of Stowe, Vermont's shopping district and was an oblique comment on a thriving tourist town's struggles to adjust to new property tax legislation.
Black gum pods and segments of thinly sliced oak firewood were drilled and strung on a sixty foot 1/8" steel cable. The black gum pods were gathered in New Jersey. The oak was saved from a firewood delivery. After stringing the black gum pods first and then the oak, the gum pods were gathered and bound in a series of tight loops. The oak segments were arranged as an arabesque stretching up to the branch of the tree.
