David M.C. Miller - the gathering

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• • The Gathering

  • Cast aluminium, Harbourfront, Toronto, 1997

From the brochure text:

"I’ve set my things down on a cement median across from Molson Place. The median, a narrow concrete divider separating the ramp from the stairs leading to the breakwater, holds a light fixture poised at its termination. It’s also a platform, a directional base for my sculpture.

Driftwood, severed branches and a variety of implements rest at its opposite end, visually balancing (corresponding with) the light fixture and surroundings. Each object is cast directly in aluminum, individually, from actual things, a real tree.

Tears in bark; signs of former use. Everything welded together. The wooden fragments—somehow loosened from their origins, from silent moorings—are rejoined, members of a connected whole. Their juxtaposition with the others, the other things--hand tools, a recorder, a wooden spoon—further transform them by suggesting that they too are complete within themselves but here contribute to a greater unity.

The image is that of a small pile assembled for burning. Unlike real fires this one refuses to burn. The moment, stilled, materializes and preserves what usually occurs in time. The change occasioned by fire has already taken place but it appears not yet begun. The menorah, an everlasting light, a Star of David is present here. The base of the arrangement forms a six-pointed star. Other star shapes, arranged in space, are placed on this.

A family tree. Branches represent those metaphorical limbs of extended relations. Links I share to a body larger than myself. The implements are symbols of work, of creation. Together they imply an act of making into one from many, a sense of belonging together despite their apparent and real dissimilarity—alone they would speak of separation and loss, of merely one event in a continuous process, of memories irrevocable lasting scars—and are now fused, if not in whole then united.

Is this hard nest of sticks and tools about to be lit, destroyed? Have we chanced upon a resting place, a camp, for someone on their way elsewhere? The light: a fire that can never burn or will illuminate forever? Scaled for warmth but adequate as a way sign, this cold pile is now a signal to distant passing ships?"