Petrification I
Chinese viewing-stone connoisseurship extends beyond stones themselves to objects that are stone-like. This includes minerals such as petrified wood, fossilized vegetable matter and corals, as well as gnarled tree roots. This sculpture is a fragment of a Joshua-tree cactus that has been washed with tempera paint and coated with acrylic resin so that it appears to have been petrified. Its convoluted form shares qualities with Chinese stones coveted because they possess Tou, holes, and Lou, channels.
SubStance #146, Vol. 47, no. 2, 2018 ©2018 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc: pp. 59-67.