Glass Half Full
- Date: 2011
- Location: Holland Point Park, Victoria, BC
- Dimensions: 8'x3'x3' red piece; 6.5'x3.5'x3.5'-blue piece
- Medium: stainless steel, epoxy, concrete, rubber, mechanics, chimes
Glass Half Full is two sculptures that take their form from the image of a straw resting in a glass of water. The design encompasses the repeated circular forms of the glass’s base, the surface of the water, and the glass’s rim, with the connecting form of the straw running from the base through the middle water circle, “resting” on the rim, and continuing upwards with its signature bend near the top. The straw’s image is refracted at the water line, suggested by a dislocation of the straw’s linearity. Each of the glasses holds the same imaginary volume of water but in a different shape, from wide and short to tall and thin. And each sculpture can turn in a full circle, changing their orientation to each other and to the site.
Glass Half Full uses a simple glass of water with a straw as an instantly familiar image with a variety of connotations, suggestive of sustenance, domesticity, and the notion of a positive outlook on life based on one’s point of view (is the glass half full or half empty?). The “bent” straw is a visual phenomenon that was a childhood fascination, the distortion created by water. We learn as children that what you see isn’t always what is there. I also wanted to play with the idea of scale to appeal to a child-like fascination with things bigger than life, in the same way that the Harrison Yacht pond appeals to our fascination with things in miniature. The sense of the fantastical is evident in the distortion that occurs in the dislocation of the straw, but also in the distortion of the glass from short and squat, to tall and thin.