Terrestrial Bodies

Sandy Wren Olgeirson

In the forests of myth and fairy tales, protagonists are transformed, heroes rise to meet challenges, deep secrets are uncovered, and great mysteries revealed. Ancient stories from around the world imagined the entire cosmos as a great tree, rooted in one world, extending into the next, its mighty trunk a ladder between worlds.    

The various sculptures in this body of work create a forest of forms, a cathedral to our interconnection with the natural world. This collection attempts to invoke the same feeling of reverence experienced as one enters the alive, quiet stillness of a forest. The forest these pieces reveal exists between two worlds — one internal and emotional, one external and familiar. In the duality of our existence, we are mortal creatures at play in a world of teeming biology, but we also experience profound swells of emotion and imbue moments with meaning. 

Like the tree firmly rooted to earth, our lives are firmly rooted to the gravity of being with boughs outstretched to the radiance of spirit and the wild, unharnessed beauty of our imaginations. 

On landscapes of human and animal forms sculpted in clay, each piece integrates elements of branches, stone, antlers, or other natural forms. This integration visually binds humanity to the natural and animal world. By borrowing elements of one and allowing another to express them, it reveals the threads of connections that are usually hidden.