Meditating in the Great Forest

American artist Martin Puryear celebrates the honest work done by one’s hands. The carved wood and the thatcher’s intimate knowledge of his craft. But his sometimes majestic sculptures also have rooms for conflicting stories of power and oppression and soft swelling and comforting shapes. Puryear has a long history with Sweden having studied in Stockholm in the 1960’s. That’s where a seated sculpture of a king by the Swedish artist Carl Milles caught his attention. The soft triangular shape gave form to his Meditation in a Beach Forest, 1996, for the sculpture park Wanås Konst – but headless, clothed in reed and forever sunk into a different state in the midst of a clearing in the woods.