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Selected Works

Selected Works Thumbnails
Pollinator (Water Lily), Cast and polished aluminum. 17 1/4h x 72w x 72d in

Pollinator (Water Lily), Cast and polished aluminum. 17 1/4h x 72w x 72d in

Pollinator (Water Lily) III, Cast and polished aluminum. 16h x 24w x 24d in

Pollinator (Water Lily) III, Cast and polished aluminum. 16h x 24w x 24d in

Pollinator (Water Lily) III (side view), Cast and polished aluminum. 16h x 24w x 24d in

Pollinator (Water Lily) III (side view), Cast and polished aluminum. 16h x 24w x 24d in

Pollinator (Water Lily) at Baldwin Gallery, CO

Pollinator (Water Lily) at Baldwin Gallery, CO

Pollinator (Water Lily) with Alice Aycock at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

Pollinator (Water Lily) with Alice Aycock at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

Pollinator (Water Lily) at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

Pollinator (Water Lily) at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

Pollinator (Water Lily) with Alice Aycock at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

Pollinator (Water Lily) with Alice Aycock at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

Pollinator (Water Lily), Cast and polished aluminum. 17 1/4h x 72w x 72d in
Pollinator (Water Lily) III, Cast and polished aluminum. 16h x 24w x 24d in
Pollinator (Water Lily) III (side view), Cast and polished aluminum. 16h x 24w x 24d in
Pollinator (Water Lily) at Baldwin Gallery, CO
Pollinator (Water Lily) with Alice Aycock at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA
Pollinator (Water Lily) at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA
Pollinator (Water Lily) with Alice Aycock at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

Description

Cast and Polished Aluminum.
Dimensions Variable

THE MEZANINE GALLERY, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NYC
November 1st - December 31st, 2019

BERKSHIRE BOTANICAL GARDEN, STOCKBRIDGE, MA
May 26th - October 8th, 2018

BALDWIN GALLERY
July 27th - September 3rd, 2012

 

E.V. Day’s Pollinator (Water Lily) sculptures replicate in cast aluminum the reproductive organs of a water lily from Claude Monet's renowned gardens in Giverny, France. While Day was artist-in-residence at the Monet Foundation, she plucked the ephemeral, iconic flower and then used a microwave press to flatten it. She scanned the result at high resolution to produce a two-dimensional photo, and from that photo built a 3-dimensional digital model to produce this series of polished cast aluminum sculptures.

From a single live specimen, Day memorializes the fragile life force of the flower on a grand, monumental scale. Having digitized the bloom and then reanimated it in relief—and each Pollinator shows a different degree of relief, a different moment of re-growth—she makes a powerful statement about technology’s ability to reconstitute life in another world and location in a futuristic form. Her process brings to mind science-fiction tropes of translocation, specifically Star Trek’s “Transporter” machine, in which actors dissolve into a cloud of electrostatic particles of light and are transported to another world. Here, a coveted flower from Giverny has been reconstituted in Aspen as a steroidal, enveloping, propulsive version of its former self: magnified hundreds of times in size, multiplied in a series of sizes and elevations, and fixed in brilliant metal.