FLORIGAMI IN THE GARDEN traveling exhibition
Unique
Price available on request
Up to one year to produce
Even caged birds sing, as Maya Angelou reminds us. But in the darkness deep in a coal mine in earlier days, if the caged canary the miners kept down there fell silent, the men dropped their tools and rushed to its cage. If it was dead, they quickly headed for the surface, out of the otherwise undetectable deadly fumes.
What are our planet’s “canaries” today, those especially sensitive species that struggle and go extinct well before most people are aware of the conditions that killed them?
Box has created this oversized bird in yellow aluminum. Each length of tubing represents one crease in the folding pattern of the original origami design. Without sides or substance, the three-dimensional “creases” are all that remain. Looking through the bird-shaped spaces, the viewer experiences their origin and absence at the same time. Appropriately, the angular sculptures are suggestive of the canary’s own (empty) cage.
When seen together and from different angles, the forms become ambiguous and abstract, no longer clearly the shape of birds. In a similar way, the overwhelming threats to our planet and humanity can feel abstract and ambiguous for many as we move through daily life. But the bright yellow color of this silent canary holds an undeniable warning, universally understood: Pay attention! Caution! Slow down! Will we heed the message in time?
