Client: City of Oklahoma City / Oklahoma City Zoological Gardens

Overview

This artwork, for Oklahoma City Zoo’s Africa Exhibit, is a Spirit-Home-Baobab-Protector for the Zoo and for all of Oklahoma. It represents a gigantic Baobab tree; an ‘Ancestor’ wearing a mask that connects her/him to the untouchable. A figure that celebrates the wild, vital reality of the savannah. That celebrates Africa’s ecology, architecture and culture, and expands them in a scintillating celebration of the human form, and of the art, customs, masks and cultural depth that inform our survival. Sculpted in intricately curved sheets of CorTEN steel, the artwork creates an open, inside-outside space for visitors to inhabit. Cut-outs and ‘doors’ in the metal allow the sun to shine through the artwork, just as it filters through her tree-like canopy. She projects intricate shadows onto the ground, which change with the time, the month, the season, creating an artwork that is always fresh, and always presents new views and perspectives.

Corten steel. 700 x 400 x 400 cm. $187,000.00 / Oklahoma City Zoological Gardens, Africa Exhibit, 2023.

Goals

The goal of this artwork is to provide an exciting, profound and immersive experience at OKC zoo. This is why the artwork, in its representation of a living tree, is entirely open to pedestrian transit. Visitors can walk inside the artwork, look through its canopy and cut-outs, and find their surrounds transformed around them.