S
p Below: Jack’s Piece, 1978
in the midst of a pod of killer whales. I have to admit, though, I’m not sure I’d have made the same connection that John did when he first saw the diving planes in their original horizontal orientation.
But then I don’t have John’s eye.
Swords into Plowshares is only one of John’s many public works of art. He’s done a version of his Swords into Plowshares at the Pelican Harbor Park in Miami, Florida, and he has plans for another related work in Russia. His hope is that similar “pods” can be created around the country and the world as symbols for peace on a global scale.
But not all John’s art takes on such serious global issues. Another work, Temple of the Stones, is a bit more whimsical. In Temple of the Stones, John has figured out how to make ten-ton boulders float exactly the way big rocks
don’t. The boulders are suspended a few feet off the ground by cables from a steel superstructure so that you’re able to move these granite monsters around with the tip of your finger. The result is almost surreal; as one boulder starts to sway, the others begin to pick up the frequency through the connecting cables and they move too. You can’t help but smile.
In John’s youth, he was a crackerjack rock climber and that sensibility to earth and stone has found expression in much of his work.
To create Arch, a rock and steel structure on the boardwalk at Redondo Beach in Seattle, John dynamited and fractured a 40-ton slab of solid rock, then reassembled it (intentionally leaving a few parts out) like a jigsaw puzzle. “Creation is really an act of destruction,” John says. “You have to tear something apart before you can create. I wanted to make something that was substantial but somehow fragile at the same
37FALL/WINTER 2011
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