Seed Pod Cairn
By Tom Herzog, Installed 2014
For the majority of my life I have expressed myself creatively through watercolor painting, but in recent years I have become fascinated with the making of sculptures that consist of the aesthetic arrangements of found natural materials. I began playing with form, texture, light and shadow, color and balance using only those materials I could find in nature. I found working with leaves, stones, flowers, cattails, ice…whatever is at hand…a very liberating and extremely creative experience. There is a constant sense of the magical, of the universe continually pointing out subtle visual/spatial relationships to me, showing me the places where gravitational balance meet aesthetic balance, where the sun sparkling off of a ripple in the creek creates shadow and movement that delights the eye, where the repetition of a certain shape of stone causes one to finally notice the exquisite beauty of each individual stone and its ultimate relationship to all stones.
The sculptures themselves are usually ephemeral so that up until now, photographs were the only record of their brief existence and a way to remember the discoveries that have been revealed. The sculptures “in the wild” are quite mystical and are very rooted to place. They blend with and become a part of their environments. More recently I’ve thought that it would be profound to experience that wild magic and mystery indoors, so I began cementing the stacked stone pieces together so that they could be portable and more permanent. Previously I had only dry stacked the stones, relying on the force of gravity to hold them together. Although somewhat domesticated compared to their wild brethren, these indoor works still exude their natural essence which is even enhanced when contrasted with man-made environments.
