At home between teaching trips, I embarked on constructing a third set of the Monitors, with a new, sturdier mode of construction, each with one of three experimental varieties of inner material. It was pleasant to work outdoors, and the castings dried quickly in the hot summer sun. I took three to be installed at the Morgan Conservatory, located in the familiar, gritty, post-indistrial urban environment of my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio.
Of course, at the Morgan, I wanted the ear-fungi to be overlooking the amazing kozo garden. I again based the colors on local fungi, and installed all three on a mulberry tree growing over an old barbed-wire topped fence.
The ears and I are listening to Tom Balbo, Artistic Director of the Morgan Conservatory.
Follow-up note:
Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring the oak hardwood that I had been using for installation, and substituted appropriately-sized kozo branches that had been steamed and stripped. They were a little too weak. The highest-placed fungus fell within a month, was replaced by the Morgan, and fell again: apparently there was just too much wind moving out towards Lake Erie in that spot. The Morgan folks brought it inside.
Towards the end of the bitterly cold polar-vortex winter, a second piece fell; by the time I visited Cleveland again in April 2014, the third piece was barely hanging on. Yet, all three were still intact, still keeping their shapes. I brought them home to repair, reinforce, and reinstall later this summer (mid-August 2014).
