Bronze, electric clock
36" x 73" x 34"
Commissioned by the Committee for Public Art and the Cleveland Public Library for the Louis Stokes Wing of the main library
The challenge of making a work for a reading room in the Business and Economics Department led me to think about what was on most people’s minds who use this resource: money. I chose to work with a piggy bank as an icon of fiscal responsibility. My bank is the size of a state fair prize-winning sow, based in part on a sow walking in Eadweard Muybridge’s animal motion studies. This work has a bronze saddle, and patrons are encouraged to “ride” as well as to drop spare change into a slot above her shoulders. The functioning clock makes reference to the adage that “Time is Money.” On a more subtle and complicated note, it is linked to my experience of seeing animals with ports in their sides to allow research on digestion. On this level, I think of the pig as a beast of burden, in service to our capitalist economy.