I’ve been thinking about my Mentor’s Grove project today. I’m in the process of writing a page about it to post here. The Grove was a very ambitious sculptural-setting I designed (but was unable to sell) in honor of my mentor, Ron Brady, who died suddenly in 2003. It was/is a very rich piece but in brief it was an experiential sculpture, half labyrinth, half outdoor classroom. The student’s experience of the sculpture began as navigating a maze that then opened into a quiet interior space — a grove — where the journey just taken was depicted in relief on the walls. The whole piece was intended as an invitation to other professors to take on the full role of mentor (conveyor of life wisdom).
The main motif was the grove in the underworld where heroes in stories travel in times of trouble. There they meet a wise soul who helps them untangle their difficulties. My mentor’s mentor, Paul Piehler, wrote a book on this traditional literary occurence. The book was called The Visionary Landscape. I used the specific imagery of the journey to the other world from the Epic Of Gilgamesh because that was the subject of the most stunning lecture I ever saw Brady give.
The picture above was an an early concept sketch I did of one of the planned reliefs. It was to represent the moment in Gilgamesh when Enkidu realizes he is a human being: his identity (here represented by his face) contracts from the rest of nature.
