Anillos

For this First Thursday assignment I went to my hometown of Lake Oswego, Oregon and walked around our downtown district. Lake Oswego Downtown is filled with artist’s sculptures on every sidewalk. One particular sculpture amongst all the chaos of shoppers and people passing by always catches my eye, a high-fired ceramic clay sculpture by Maria Wickwire called Anillos. A quote on the sculpture's plaque states that the artist's intentions for the piece was that it “evokes annual rings which show the history of a tree, just as life experiences are written in the cells of our bodies.” I think it is very clever how the artist uses this link between the human body and tree rings to tell history of a human life. The simplicity of the monochromatic color scheme helps to emphasize the lines formed by carved away rings around the mass of the focus's body. There is a sense of repetition coming from the lines as each line circles around the body of the sculpture. The lines of the sculpture are what draws the viewer's attention, as though it tells a story, the story of her life, just like rings on a tree can tell you a lot about what the tree had gone through. Emotion is evident through the body’s posture, though you can see the facial expression the way the body is posed gives even more emotion of life's struggles and wonder of what is yet to come.

- Sarah Seitz