Watershed
Ferrocement 6' x 3.5' x 2'Martin Webster, Burnsville, NC
Location: On the Virginia side of State Street in front of Blakely Mitchell.
My work is inspired by the natural rhythms of geological and biological forms, filtered through an appreciation of the materials and design sensibilities of architectural and industrial design. I explore issues of the individual's relationship to the human community and the natural world.
Beginning at some moment during 2006 or 2007, for the first time ever, more than half of humanity will live in cities, without direct knowledge of where their food and water come from. This is the kind of occasion that we call a watershed event, when we move from one era into the next, where all the rules are different.
My sculpture didn't start out being about this. Outdoor sculptures need to shed water. But as is so often the case, art and life became interwoven, as associations continued to present themselves. At the time I was creating this sculpture, I had been involved for two years in the Bald Creek Local Watershed Plan, a community effort to preserve and improve water quality in the area drained by Bald Creek, including the creek that my wife and I live beside. As I worked with the abstract forms that I would enjoy seeing rain splash over, they inevitably came to incorporate those experiences and my response to them. Since this was also the largest single form I had created to date in ferrocement, it became a personal watershed event in another sense.