One's-Self I Sing

2025, 180" (457 cm) x 120" (305 cm) x 48" (122 cm), glass, wood, metal, polymer enhanced gypsum, paint, permanent collection: Muskegon Museum of Art photo credit: PD Rearick

One’s-Self I Sing is a large-scale, site- specific hanging sculpture that investigates this current moment in relation to Deep Time. The sculpture, measuring approximately 240” x 120” x 60”, can be thought of as an “exploded” still life, a genre that holds the capacity to illuminate the ways that we understand our world through visual metaphors.

One’s-Self I Sing is comprised of assorted transparent glass cultural objects including drinking vessels, tools, furniture fragments, and books, and a multitude of opaque gypsum rock formations. Many glass objects are conjoined, alluding to interconnected systems while rock formations hang autonomously. The depiction of rocks in One’s-Self I Sing anchors the composition in the natural world and contextualizes the objects as symbols of the age of the Anthropocene.

The sculpture converges both floors of the building, offering the visitor opportunities to discover different aspects of the composition. Aspects of Muskegon Museum of Art’s permanent collection, such as MacMonnies’ bow, Curry’s wagon wheel, Lovell’s bullseye and Homer’s scythe are referenced. All components are held by individual braided cables that suggests both ascent and descent. The marriage of transparent and opaque formations alludes to what is seen and known juxtaposed with what is concealed and lost over time.

The title, One’s Self I Sing, pays homage to Walt Whitman’s poem of the same name.

One’s Self I Sing at dawn, photo credit: PD Rearick

One’s-Self I Sing, detail, photo credit: PD Rearick