Last year, my elderly next door neighbor, Olga, was telling me about the place she where she grew up in Hungary. It was a wine growing region that produced wonderful sweet wines and was famous for its beautiful popular trees. Olga remembers the sounds of the poplar leaves rustling in the breeze and singing the local folk songs about the autumnal golden poplar trees. In Greek mythology the poplar tree is the Tree of Life, because of its distinctly bicolored leaves; dark green on the side that faces Heaven, pale green on the side that faces Earth, representing the male/female duality from which all was born. This artwork, titled Olga's Music Box, is about nostalgia and they way that sounds can trigger half forgotten memories on the other side of the world.
The installation:
About 2 meters above the ground, strung between two poplar trees are five parallel lines of black hessian webbing, representing a music stanza.
The music notes are represented by large black poplar leaf shapes. On one side of each is a piece of broken mirror.
The leaf-music-notes are attached to the parallel lines with a swivel allowing the leaf-music-notes to spin freely in the breeze and the mirrored side catches and reflects the sunlight, creating dancing patterns of light on the shadowy ground.
Set amongst the poplar trees at Stonehurst Cedar Creek Vineyard, Olga's Music Box entices viewers deep into the forest of trees, as they catch glimpses of the leaf-music-notes glinting in the distance, a stanza of spinning silent music.
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