Arco di Zefiro
391 days over 2 summers I cast 657 branches, roots, vines, leaves, and roses from Villa Zefiro’s trees, transformed them into 831 lbs. of bronze, assembled several times, welded, and installed on site with the assistance of 23 people.
In the 1970’s, I met the sculptor Robert Morris in a famous Soho bar and bashfully introduced myself as a sculptor working on a project underneath the Triboro Bridge. He spit the ashes of his big cigar into a small glass next to his whiskey, slowly turned his head turtlelike to look me up and down and said, “How big is it and how much does it weigh?”
Large scale public sculpture has often been made by a certain kind of man. There are many jokes about ‘this kind of man’ and perhaps the opposite could be said of a woman who possesses the hubris to do the same: an expression of self-preservation, permanence, or mortality in an uncertain age.
I thought about Beverly Pepper and her Corten steel monoliths, competing with the big boys in the realm of Modernist sculpture. Men and sometimes women imposing their will on history with phallic menhirs; the absurdity of life continuing after the invention of the nuclear bomb. Or perhaps are we just carrying the torch of prehistoric peoples marking the Earth to tell time or acknowledging other forms of extraterrestrial life?
I thought about Morris and wanted to make this sculpture light as a feather, flickering like ghosts, chameleon-like into oblivion, just as they surrounded and followed my every movement before disappearing into the gardens.
But most of all, I was inspired by the enormity of Nature. The landscape has always been the most moving force to me; it is perhaps what gives me the greatest solace in the brevity of the human experience. Arco di Zefiro is about that power and Beverly’s spirit giving me the gift of confidence and scale to complete this Arch.
How big is it and how much does it weigh? Irrelevant.
Marsha Pels
Brooklyn, NY
July 2024
