“Bloodline: Past Present Future”. Is a 15-foot long trail of history. There are no names here because they are all our family, our history, are now and the next generation.

There are 42 figures which came from a book I read in college, “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. In the book, they were in search to the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. The answer a super computer gave them was the number 42. For me this simple number is what makes me laugh at life, we can overlook the answer that is in front of us all, the ultimate answer to life is our past our now and our future. Who we are and what we learn from our life’s and those that came before us and what we leave for the next generation.
A Cedar tree is the base for the figures to walk across. Growing up my mother would use cedar to purify our home, release spirits and chase away bad dreams, that smell for me is home. The tree is cut lengthwise so it exposes the rough center of the tree and its lines, the lines of the tree show its life its history. I de-barked the exterior but kept the curve of the tree and its raw surface. The curve is mounted to the wall; the figures stand upon the top outer edge. You see them walking through time, their life above and the trees life below.
There are 3 sections one for our past one for our present and one for our future. There is a figure at the joint each section looking back that figure is the storyteller. They will tell of the last generation, passing on the stories of who came before so we do not forget, so we honor who we are and where we each came from.

Light cast shadows of the figures on the wall, these shadows represent memory. Like a shadow these memories cannot be held, and in the end, we are all only a shadow in history, shadows on this earth.

The Cigar Figures come from a Native American story of my childhood that my mother told of the “Stick People”. The “Stick People” would run through the night and call your name, she never described the figures and I was drawn to the idea of what they looked like for most of my life. The Cigar Figures are my reimagining of that story, now a story of family and my past. The figures are made of real cigars and found sticks. I create molds of the cigars and then cast them and the sticks in bronze. The faces are of the people from my past as far back as I can trace.

Bloodline Past Present Future
Unique Cast Bronze with Patina, Cedar, and Steel

In the Collection of The Heritage Trust, Oklahoma City OK