1999 20"x 2"x 5'2" Carved glass, slate, bronze
Absence is an homage to the French writer Jean Giono, and to the hero, or perhaps anti-hero, of his little book: "The Man Who Planted Trees". Giono came accross this man on one of his long, solitary walks in Haute Provence after the First World War. After this first encounter, Giono returned many years later to discover that the man had single-handedly reforested an entire region in the south of France by planting one hundred acorns daily over the span of twenty years. The acorn, carved out of the glass block, is both absent, because it is hollow, and present, because of its outline. The block of glass is set at eye level inside a vertical slate stella and acts as a window separating present from past, in what could exist and come to be or not.