New York-based artist Jim Hodges is not well known for large outdoor sculptures but rather for his use and exploration of domestic materials and craft techniques traditionally considered feminine, such as embroidery and the use of artificial flowers. His work is considered conceptual, exploring life’s temporal and fragile nature as well as life and death. As a gay artist during the height of the AIDS crisis, he experienced firsthand the devastating impact the disease had on his community. “People are dropping like flies and I am thinking, I am going to be next,” Hodges said. His struggle to make sense of loss, and how to proceed with life after loss, permeates his work. Hodges avoids discussing the subject of his work, which makes his art, as one critic described it, “quiet, personal and vague.”
The untitled piece shown here, completed in 2011, incorporates four granite boulders each standing more than 6 feet tall and weighing between 8–13 tons. A path carves its way between the monoliths. The inner faces of the rocks have been coated with polished stainless steel and a colorful lacquer finish. The experience walking through this installation is dynamic, intimate and monumental. The molded stainless surfaces simultaneously reflect the sky, the sunlight, the earth and the movement of people, including colorful, tortured and fleeting glimpses of yourself. The contrast between the permanence of the granite and the temporal colorful reflections is poetic. The experience is eerily similar to leaving flowers on a gravestone—a momentary act of somber mourning that simultaneously reflects the beauty and fragility of life. It is strangely comforting.