Evolutionary Wave
This is the only piece in my career that I have ever re-worked. In its “former life,” Wave Length was named Dune and was the first piece I created when Gaye and I moved to Switzerland in 1999.
Ordinarily my work is done in complete isolation. Now, all of a sudden, I was setting up a temporary studio in a corner of a custom furniture company in a foreign country. Day One, the only person in the company who spoke English introduced himself and said, “Zo, you are the great American artist. Ve shall see!” It was life in a fish bowl. Daily, I had people looking over my shoulder. At times it was intimidating knowing that I was working in a country that still utilizes craft guilds when I am self taught. Life was full of cultural changes, language problems, new food, new working environments, using metric scales on unfamiliar power tools, differences in electrical power for some of my equipment, and general requirements for being an “Ambassador” for the U.S. The total experience was incredibly wonderful and enriching, but the initial adjustments were definitely daunting and affected my work.
Although I completed Dune, I was never happy with the outcome. It just didn’t flow the way I knew it could. It got to the point of such dissatisfaction that I withdrew the piece from exhibition. But it takes a pretty big corner to push a 2′ x 4′ sculpture out of sight. I finally decided that the only solution was to completely re-work this piece and even re-name and re-date the final work. In my eyes, it then deserved to join the Confluence series.
