Six Figures was created for the Convergence VI Festival in Roger Williams Park, Providence, Rhode Island. It was funded with a grant from Forecast Public Art.
Six Figures is a public-art sculpture in the earthworks tradition.
Physically, it’s a 14′ diameter mound of fertile soil rising out of the ground. Six clear plastic figures circle the mound like the spokes in a wheel. The figures are embedded in the soil and alive with plants life, like terrariums or small human green houses.
Blues wires, twisted in the shape of neurons, run from the satellite dish through the sphere and spread out over the clover like a nervous system. Between the figures the mound is planted with clover. The central hub consists of a fan in a clear Plexiglas sphere which automatically controls the temperature in the figures. A small satellite dish at the top of the sphere serves two functions. It diverts rain water away from the fan and metaphorically gathers energy from the sky.
In this work, all the resources of the human-body and the earth-body join forces through this living machine to communicate as one entity.
It alludes to the earth as a living entity, of which human society forms its intelligence system or neural network, witnessed by the computerized communications revolution presently underway.