Of Mere Being

Of Mere Being

Wallace Stevens was a businessman who worked most of his career in the insurance industry in Connecticut. He wrote poetry as a way to calm himself, often while commuting to and from work. If you read poetry, no doubt you have favorite poem you revisit from time to time. Such a poem becomes an old friend. That being said, I would like to introduce you to this one.

Of Mere Being                                                            

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor,

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.                              

The palm at the end of the mind with a bird singing a song without feeling reminds us that merely being is not enough. The poem seems to challenge us to see the beauty, hear the bird’s song and give it meaning and reason. Find the joy.

Thank You Wallace Stevens

Photo Caption:

ST LOUIS - Artist Robert Lobe (b. 1945) was inspired by Wallace Stevens poem Of Mere Being when he used a dying walnut tree as a starting point/substrate for his sculpture The Palm at the End of the Parking Lot. Photo (above)  by Wes Morgan captures the sculpture under threatening skies last fall (2012).  

ROBERT LOBE

(AMERICAN, BORN 1945)

The Palm at the End of the Parking Lot, 1995/2023
annealed hammered aluminum, stainless steel
204 x 96 x 84 inches (126 inch circumference)
Laumeier Sculpture Park Commission, with funds from the Mark Twain Laumeier Endowment Fund

Robert Lobe has described his sculptures as “involving an interrupted, sacrificed Nature that is not just borrowed but violated.” His works are created in nature as sculptural echoes of natural form, usually rocks or trees. The signature process Lobe uses is an adaptation of repoussé, an ancient technique in which metal is hammered to create designs or shapes. The fusion of natural beauty and metal handiwork shows the wildly disorganized aspect of nature rather than the tranquil one presented in a park setting.

The sculpture is a re-imagining of his original work from 1995 that included the trunk of a walnut tree. Incorporating the now empty space where the tree once stood, the hollowed artwork amplifies his focus on the violence of ‘nature and culture.’ The aura of the sculpture obliterates the formal distinction between nature and technology by imposing a distressed layer of armor plate implying the tree’s old contours. The punch marks left by the pneumatic hammer that formed the aluminum become a matrix of penny size scars through which Lobe has preserved and mimicked the tree’s original textural surface. Are technological interventions strong enough to reverse the ravages technology has already visited upon the landscape? Lobe’s answer to this question remains enigmatic.

---

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Robert Lobe was born in Detroit in 1945. He earned his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1967. Lobe received National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1979 and 1984 and an award from the Joan Mitchell Foundation in 2001. He has exhibited extensively throughout the United States at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The White House, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Lobe's works are in numerous collections, including the Brooklyn Museum; the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Mihama-cho International Outdoor Sculpture Garden, Japan; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Visit www.robertlobe.com for more information.