Artist Statement: About 10 years ago all our beautiful, tall ash trees began dying from the ash borer disease sweeping across the North East. It broke my heart, but in a strange, lovely way this great sorrow planted an inner tree - in my heart.
My sculpture of a dying, diaphanous tree is set in a small niche cut into a massive plate of steel. This scale & contrast felt intimate and interior like this new tree I now carry within. I don’t know what the environmental moral is. Perhaps there is something about loss that breaks open our heart finally. Or perhaps we’ll save the earth when the inner earth takes root in our own souls. Anyway, I’ve been planting more trees.
Bio: American sculptor & liturgical artist. Working in wood, steel, & bronze. Born in Texas, lived with his expatriate family in Costa Rica & Guatemala during the 1960s, in the 1970s lived briefly in Amsterdam - now living and working in the Chicago area. Besides his studio work, he leads tours focused on Japanese craft & design.
Orth's work shows contrasts between mainstream 20th Century design and ideas from archeology, anthropology, tribal art, & Japanese gardening. True to his own personal conflicts, Orth’s work exhibits Gothic/ Existential drama and the happy play of Mid-Century Modern – sometimes within the same piece. James A. Mangum, author of the Dos Cruces Trilogy, has called Orth’s work "Amazing, overwhelming, musical. Rock and roll, the blues, arias." Designer Sandy Hill says the work has "wonderful, mess-with-your-mind appeal."
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