Arc (2021)
18″ x 8″ x 4″
maple, glass, solder, candles
In the beginning, the earth was a big hunk of hot matter. Then, as gravity began to separate the elements, pulling the heavier towards the core, the outer surface hardened into some sort of crust. At this time, there were no real continents, at least not like the ones we know today. As things cooled, the crust began to move, creating chains of volcanic island arcs (similar to the modern-day Aleutians or Japan) where a plate was sucked beneath another, melted, and rose again to the surface. The continents we live upon today are composed of these very islands slammed together, chain upon chain over the billions of years since. In the Pacific Northwest, this legacy is nowhere near as distant as other parts of the world, everything west of the cascades having been accreted to the continent in the past couple hundred million years (relatively recently in a global context).