The High Water Houses
The High Water Houses is a sculpture from my, The House as a Metaphor series of sculptures. This series plays with the iconic house shape in a variety of abstracted contexts, juxtaposing the house with other recognizable symbols. Most of the pieces are monochrome, and use a single material for both the house and the additions to it, which range from stilts, wheels and railroad tracks to clouds and crosses. Minimal and conceptual, these sculptures are meant to interrogate the meaning of the house symbol by exploring how simple interventions affect its interpretation.
This design is also a model for a proposal for a much larger public art sculpture designed for a public park and/or sculpture garden. It consists of six symbolic white house forms each of which is mounted onto tall thin support legs of various heights.
The large public art sculpture would be made of painted steel; the small sculpture is made of painted plastic.
The inspiration for the sculpture comes from my childhood memories of small houses that were built along a river near to my home in southern Illinois. These houses were all constructed on the top of tall posts, in order to keep them dry whenever the river flooded.
My intension was also to symbolically refer to the rising of seawater due to global climate change, and the need to keep our houses safe from this new phenomenon. The symbolism is carried further on by the way in which the houses are precariously mounted onto the thin support legs, suggesting that safety of any kind in this new age of climate change may be wishful thinking.
Status: Built
Location: Santa Fe, NM, US
