LOUIS'S LAS VEGAS RESTAURANT

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - CEILING SCULPTURE

 

 "Cloth and Steel"

​

This piece is metaphor for the production of cotton that played such an integral role in the heritage of the Deep South.  The growing and harvesting of cotton as well as the manufacturing of cotton goods hold a solemn place in our collective memory of early colonial plantations, freed slave sharecroppers and those that labored within the cotton mills that blanketed the southeastern United States. The sculpture consist of ceiling mounted steel frames each interwoven with cotton ribbon and configured into a large circular form that punctures the ceiling of the main dining room of this highly regarded and eclectic restaurant.  Specifically in this piece the fabric references humanity and the steel framework on which the fabric is woven is a reference to the machine-based technologies used in the both the farming and harvesting of the cotton as well as the production of the cotton cloth in the factories of the rural south. In this piece, the cloth ribbon representing humanity and the steel framework representing technology are codependent on each other, meaning that each gives form to the other. The essence of each is defined and brought forth because of a dependence on the other.   It is as in all things, a balance of opposites.