Treasure Chest

What is in your treasure chest? Very important objects to you, right? For me, it holds my collection of small sculptures, my artistic ideas about what could and should be. Every piece represents a model for a large scale sculpture. Each one could easily be placed in an outdoor sculpture garden or an elegant corporate plaza. It’s just the way I think because when I work small, I’m actually thinking big.

What is a treasure chest? It’s basically a box that holds precious things. It could just as easily be a cigar box full of old photographs, as it could be a shoebox full of mementos. Either way, it’s some kind of container designed to hold valuables. In the old world, travel was done by either sailing ship or by caravan. In both cases, cargo was loaded and carried in chests. Passages could be very long, and people needed to live out of their chests for the duration. Do you know the reason why treasure chests had the curved shape on the top? Hats. Back in the day, hats were very popular and also very expensive. You didn’t want to crush it in a duffel bag or knapsack, so travel chests with the curved top came into existence.

My treasure chest operates as a time capsule. It was built to be indestructible. I kept the old world shape and fabricated it out 1/4” thick aluminum. I even took the time to back weld all the seams but I left the welds exposed to show the process. The oversized hinges were forged by hand to resist forced entry. Anything short of a nuclear holocaust, this chest will continue to function and exist for a millennium. That is my legacy. Long after I am gone from here on Earth, these tiny sculptures in the chest will be all that remains to tell my stories.