Carbon Sink

In 2011, the green space in front of you sprouted controversy. Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around was installed by British artist Chris Drury. Circular and 36-feet in diameter, it was composed of local wood killed by pine beetles. Logs were secured with rebar into a spiraling sculpture with charring in the center with  chunks of Wyoming coal filling the spaces in between the strands of the vortex. Drury planned for the piece to degrade over 5-20 years, telling the story of its “return to nature.” According to his website and to interviews in the news, he wanted to “make a very beautiful object that pulls you in,” to communicate “that we are part of something much bigger than us,” and to more broadly “generate conversation” connecting fossil fuels, global warming, and the health of our forests. 

However, only three days into the sculpture’s creation a news article proclaimed “University of Wyoming Sculpture Blasts Fossil Fuels.” It said the project didn’t “sit well with Wyoming’s mineral industry.” Conversation swirled around questions of censorship, academic freedom, university funding, and government interests. As a result, Carbon Sink was removed in 2012, perhaps in hopes of erasing the painful debates it had inspired. Although the sculpture’s site has disappeared, Carbon Sink is still referenced in public discussion when questions about freedom of expression and partisan politics arise. 

Contributed by Nancy Small