The Lovers Link

Commissioned 10 year wedding anniversary gift. Ingredients: aged pine, tin, glass, bird skull, bead, ball bearing, image, text, insect mounting pins, hair, dust, sea snail shells, beetles. This commissioned piece for a married couple's 10 year anniversary explores the duality and longevity of their union after a decade. I chose to use objects the husband gave me, perhaps of some sentimental value, definitely old, and incorporate the material tin, as a symbol of the 10 year, as tradition has it. The piece is divided in two, with an upstairs and a downstairs, to symbolize the structure of a marriage, and the ups and downs of that relation. Divided by a cross-section of 10 floorboards, filled with the dust and leftover creatures of the past, the things we sweep away. The eyes of the bird show the duality of the union: smooth and rough, earthy and intangible, weathered and sharp. The fighting roosters represent how we at times show our talons, as opposed to our wisdom and love, and the skull represents that life shared as the completed circle.