Gentlest Gesture

Gentlest Gesture is a wire-mesh frame sakura branch over which I cultivated crystals. The Mylar blossoms are attached to and activated by an exposed muscle wire circuit. Muscle wire is a tiny, hair-thin wire that has been treated with various metals and acts very much like a bio muscle, contracting when a current is sent through it. The effect is that the blossom gently moves, a motion somewhere between opening/closing and twitching.

A springtime bike ride through Karuisawa, Japan, and Neruda’s book of poems, Stones of the Sky, influenced this work. I was attempting to envision climate change and its impact on the landscape in a positive light. When Neruda was dying of cancer, he wrote of the body transforming from flesh into crystals, into jewels. It is a geological perspective on death as not an end, but a prolonged transition into something more beautiful. Overall, the intended tone of this work is one of optimism, transformation, and mystery.