l'Embrace by Richard Lyons

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l'Embrace

Richard Lyons

l'Embrace

broken blocks, cement

approximately 100 x 40 x 50

NFS

Not For Sale

Location: La Raze de la Londonnière, Loire

La Raze de la Landonnière s the house in France of Marie-Josée Drewitt, an old friend from our student days, located a little south of Bourg-Argental (Loire). I visited La Raze several times, and twice took my young family there for our summer vacation. For reasons too tedious to detail here, the garden a La Raze had been divided by a concrete block wall, which I demolished in the summer of 1989. Lacking proper tools, it was impossible to remove the three reinforced concrete posts that had stiffened the wall. To pass time during two successive vacations there, I used the three posts as armatures for sculptures created from the rubble of the demolished wall and a sack of cement.

The first two figures were "Enceinte" and "Le Pisseur" were made during the first vacation at La Raze. The following year I decides to create a more complex sculpture with two figures embracing.

The photographs date from 2010 and show the work after 20 years of weathering.