I originally conceived of the idea for Anillos (Spanish for growth rings) when I attended a performance of Cirque
du Soleil. All of the performers were wildly costumed and colorful and I was
told that they came from all over the world. Their experiences were rich and
their stories many. Over twenty languages were spoken in the cafeteria tent!
Amid all the frenetic action and colorful dress was one little performer who
stood out to me. She was a child of about five or six, part of a family
act. She was simply dressed in a white leotard which completely covered her,
except for her little face. At one point, it was her job to sit quietly, "criss-cross-applesauce"
looking down at her hands in her lap, while her parents performed behind
her. I have forgotten the gravity-defying stunts her parents achieved behind
her back, but as she waited there, she exuded such a centered calm that I
still remember her.
I wanted to capture that sense of gravity and peacefulness in a sculpture.
As I began building her, she took on a history, if you will. She grew up,
but still maintained her sense of peace. For some reason, she seemed to want
to have rings wrapped around her and I remember, as I began to carve the
first ring into her body, a sense of leaping away from familiar ground.
The rings made me think of reading the history of a tree in its growth
rings, all the years of fire and flood and flourishing. I thought, then,
about how our own life stories write themselves into the cells of our own
bodies. The little white-clad acrobat at Cirque du Soleil was like a blank
page before life had had a chance to write much upon her. Anillos carries
the marks of a life lived fully and carries them in a way that we can all
see. In this time of upheaval in the world, when people may focus on the
divisions between us, what difference might it make if we could all read
each other, as we might the rings of a tree? Might we discover more
compassion in our hearts? And what difference might that make in the
world our children will inherit?