Ruby's Arch - by Susanna Linburg

Bronze - 1999, Northport, Michigan

The sources of Susanna Linburg's art are the rhythms and secrets of nature, the mysteries and dreams of life. . Her impulse to create art arises from a desire to delve into the root of her personal past, and to know its relationship to the greater collective past embodied in the monuments of art. The remains of a Greek colony on the coast of Sicily have inspired her. She captures the essence of order and quiet beauty and produces a harmonious balance between mass and void. The slender steel columns imply strength without weight and the traditional pediments give way to curved, flowering forms that cap the columns and create the framework through which to view the world.

This sculpture, Ruby's Arch, is part of a series that originates from a classical source: Selinunte which was a Greek colony on the southern coast of Sicily. What remains of this destroyed civilization are monumental fragments of architectural elements. Pitted, eroded stone provides a view of a once great society. Her arches intentionally allude to relationships of order and vitality, of stability and chaos in a modern world. The arch suggests passage of time, of season, of age from youth to maturity, passage from one generation to another, from one landscape to another. It implies a journey, a quest for discovery, for knowledge. There is dramatic tension between the stability of the supporting columns and the energy of the lintel forms, which explore, implode, cascade and erupt. Her experience as an artist fuses her Midwestern background with the European traditions of art and culture.