Kuja

The figure of a weary, life-beaten kuja (Croatian term for female dog) passes into the mirage of existence, where time, history, and decay become visible in a living body. Light passes through the cracks in the sculpture, offering insight into the invisible reality.

The sculpture is made from a copper sheet that, for three hundred years, protected the wooden angel atop the bell tower of the cathedral in Krk, Croatia. In the 18th century, an earthquake devastated the tower, cracking and collapsing its stone pyramid. A new angel was then made in Venice: carved in wood, holding a trumpet, and sheathed in copper to protect it from the elements. Over three centuries, the weather still found its way through that sheathing, until a new cast of the angel became necessary in the 1970s. While clearing a pile of material set aside for disposal, I found a piece of wood covered in extremely thin, corroded copper sheet - later identified as sheathing from the angel's shoulder. I kept this fragment and built it into the sculpture. Time, here, is the material itself; it is the motive that gave rise to 'Kuja,' giving plastic form to the passage of time through a body worn and bowed by it.