Part II - Ele

In every person's life, there's a time when one feels to change one's status. Where in some cases this status is usually given by one's family. In such a case one tries to create his or her own identity this piece is a struggle of that process.

In this piece, an elephant is shown balancing himself on a very fragile outcropping of stone. Despite being stone, the surface is made of friable material such as shale. The foundation suggests a surface or material that was once solid, secure, and trusted but now has, somehow, become something entirely different. It represents a familiar element in one’s life- a relationship, status, position, etc.- that was once so familiar that it had been taken for granted. That element is now foreign and changing for the worse. Given the elephant’s size and weight, the struggle to maintain balance in such a condition of fragility seems surreal and therefore, an impossibility. To further add to the allusion to uncertainty and fragility, the footing around the elephant is obscured by a dark haze. If the elephant started to lose balance, wobble, and glance down to reestablish his footing, he would not be able to do so because of the difficulty of seeing the surface upon which he stands. The haze represents one not being able to see things clearly which has the potential to cause a situation to become worse.