Description:
Mausoleum is a maquette of an original crate that was used to house and ship glass plant models from Germany to Boston in the late 1800’s. The models are now part of The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants that are on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. These four native California specimens, from the collection, are on the verge of disappearing. This is due to the constant environmental reimagining of the California landscape that mirrors the waves of new settlers that arrived with new visions of the California dream for every age. The Blaschka models are a window through which we can look onto the landscape of the not-so-distant past. Lying on a bed of straw, recreations of the plaster bases that would have held the models render their absence as depressions in glass. The crate becomes the repository of an impossible past, an Eden that only exists as an image.
Title:
Blacklisted: A Planted Allegory (Mausoleum)
Year:
2015
Media:
Wood, nails, straw, paper, wire, cast glass
Dimensions:
31.5” x 90.5” x 12”
