98 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {landmark} words by MARGARET KOENIG photography by ROBB MOST Guarding the entrance to Willow Oaks Park, Brian Goggin and Michael Ekerman’s “Convertibles” sprouts out of the earth with vigor one wouldn’t typically expect from a towering statue of couches. To Brian and Michael, this stony sculpture is not just a salute to the sedentary but also a reflection on the evolving relationship between the land and its inhabitants, from the Indigenous peoples who lived in relative harmony with nature to the European settlers who sought domination over the environment, gradually transforming it into the suburban landscape of Menlo Park today. The sculpture uses “this image of couches stony sofas like doing stuff that hasn’t been done before,” Michael says. The river rock cobbles create a flowing, expressive look that borders on the abstract, allowing the sculpture to be, in Brian’s words “part of this collaborative, artistic, three-dimensional conversation” with viewers and with the earth itself. “I’m interested in having my work opening up like a flower that has beauty, humor, thought and an invitation to interact with consciousness.” Most of all, the two artists hope that the piece will resonate with viewers for years to come. “Human life is so short,” Brian says. “However, the life of a stone sculpture can be very long.” to attract the attention of the suburban mind,” Brian explains. They erupt from the earth and climb toward the sky like a blooming plant reaching for the sun. After enlisting Michael, a local artist who specializes in stone masonry, they labored throughout the cold, wet winter of 1999-2000 to bring their vision to life. They dug the foundation by hand (with some help from Michael’s 90-year-old father-in-law), manually built the rebar for the statue’s internal framework and painstakingly tied individual stones into the sculpture, a process that took around six months. “It was a challenge building something that big and that crazy, but I
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