Three Graces

Listing Details

Alison Erickson has lived and worked at The Mill Studio in Waikari, North Canterbury since 1998. She sculpts and casts bronze on the premises, with her partner, Sam Mahon.

"The sculpture, The Three Graces, comes from the Greek stories of Zeus’ three daughters. They were the goddesses of play and happiness, relaxation and charm, beauty nature and creativity.

Partly this piece is about what we are losing sight of in this country in our pursuit of endless growth and profit. It's also a tribute to my friend Helen who died this year aged 43. I miss her terribly, some of the colour went out of the world. Her death caused me to think of what friendship is.

Partly it is architecture, a carefully built delicate structure, like a fungal network, hard to put back together again once disturbed. Relationships like this are an extension of the physical home, the fine threads that are shared experience and conversation and love that lead back to the physical structure of the person, which is like the tree that feeds the network of smaller organisms unseen below the earth.

I constructed the Three Graces with this architecture in mind. Helen was  a professional singer in the classical music world. She understood Art. She spoke to me shortly before she died about her fears for the orchestras and the difficulties of endless budget cuts. She read history at university and would have understood about the Three Graces with their heads bowed against the casual disregard for the Arts and all that this means."

Dimensions:   230 mm W x 170 mm D x 440 mm H