Day 7

One week into the project and it is apparent that we now not only have walls in our sculpture but doors and windows as well. It seems appropriate that the "home of American Impressionism" might inspire a sculpture in the form of a dwelling. As the stickwork grows up beside the Lieutenant River it is reminiscent, though in a much more fantastic format, of the makeshift artists' studios that dotted the riverbank a century ago.

As the sculpture continues to grow, more and more connections to the Florence Griswold Museum come into focus. Patrick's recent contemplation of ruins, like those of the temple complex at Angkor Wat featured in this month's National Geographic Magazine are inspirations for his work here. In the photos, vines and "strangler" fig trees are seen overtaking the man-made constructions of the Khmer Empire. Many Romantic landscape painters in Europe and America took buildings, cities, and entire empires brought to ruin and returned to nature as their subjects. Even Florence Griswold's house itself can be thought of as a building on the verge of ruin many times in its history.