A Photo essay on an (Ice) Scupture at Willamette University

Last night the mercury dipped into the high teens in Salem, OR. This isn't very cold for those who live in the Upper Midwest or the Northeast, but it is pretty cold for us Willamette Valley wimps. One of the beautiful results of this kind of night is that you see ice in the morning where you might not have anticipated it. This essay shows some of the ice which had formed on a sculpture at Willamette University, where I used to teach. Let me tell you first about the sculpture, and then the ice.

Willamette and its "Bird" Sculpture

Between the main parking lot and the campus of Willamette University is this sculpture, seen from a distance of about 20 feet.

No, the eagle is not peeing. This scupture actually is supposed to depict a biblical scene. Just off to the left is a plaque with these words on it: "But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (Is. 40:31). I don't know the sculptor but the meaning seems crystalline.

Why would Willamette have such a sculpture on its campus (by the way, atop the rock on the right is a nest--sorry it doesn't come through clearly)? Well, at one time Willamette celebrated its religious heritage (Methodist), but in our day of secularity and the need for colleges to pull down all the dough they can, religious affiliation can be recognized as a thing from the deep past but cannot be much celebrated today. But there still are stray Methodists that walk the halls of the campus; the Chaplain, for example, is a genuine 60's liberal who has successfully re-invented himself so many times that he can without insincerity speak the most up-to-date language without sounding a bit strained (unlike most Methodists). So some alum, no doubt of the Methodist persuasion, donated a chunk of dough to the college so that it could get this sculpture and so that we would not forget our "Biblical" or "Christian" underpinnings. Well, I think more likely what happened is that Willamette both got the Sculpture and forgot its religious past. A real "win-win" situation.

I hazard a guess that the money for this came from a wealthy Methodist because the "message" is so clear. There is nothing unequivocal about it. No abstraction messes up the earnest but profound truth that the donor was trying to communicate. It is so Methodist--clear, to the point, upbeat, gently Evangelical, brimming with "spirit."

The Eagle Has Landed--Ice on the Sculpture

But it is hard for an eagle to get off the ground when ice clogs your sculpture. Perhaps the overworked maintenance people forgot to turn off the water. Perhaps because it was MLK, Jr. Day, they all got the day off and none of the administrators knew where the switch could be found to turn off the water. Nevertheless, when I got on campus today, the water continued to pour from the sculpture, but ice was forming all over the pool. Here is a picture.

Well, this is what I saw at 8:30 this morning. Note that the steady stream of water falls from the upper left and right, that it falls on the rocks, flows into the pool and, almost immediately, it becomes ice. Little chips of the ice had broken off and seemed themselves to have taken wing, finding their way to the walks nearby and even as far as the parking lot.

But as I was looking at the sculpture, the words of the Scripture came to me when Moses was watching the burning bush that wasn't consumed: "I must turn side and look at this great sight" (Ex. 3:3). So I went closer, and here is what I saw:

This is the rock holding up the rock upon which the eagle is perched. It is covered with hoarfrost (or is it rime ice?) with glittering and pointed ice knives jabbing out at the air in front of me. And I began to think, as I looked at this part of the sculpture, that the presence of the ice had transformed the sculpture from a transparent to abstract piece of art. Indeed, the "clear" ice had made the meaning now "indistinct." What do you see here?

We can imagine all kinds of pictures that we now see. Imagine the uncovered rock as the point of a chin; then the white ice becomes a sort of beard or covering. Or, the white becomes a series of blankets covering the rough surface below. The truth about abstract sculpture is that it focuses on form; the best works convey powerful feelings that emerge from the conscious or unconscious intellectual or emotional springs of our being. Now we can ignore the eagle and begin to dive into the world of the hardened ice. By so doing we aren't exactly hexing the Pentateuch, but we are putting more and different meaning into the sculpture than the Methodists ever imagined. Or, is that just the work of their Spirit?

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