In honor of Mercury stationing direct this week, I’d like to share this sculpture with you. Hands down, this is my favorite piece of sculpture every to be sculpted. It’s a piece by Alice Aycock entitled “Tree of Life Fantasy: Synopsis of the Book of Questions Concerning the World Order and/or the Order of Worlds.” I used to live near this piece and would make late night pomo pilgrimages all the time. There are so many things to see in here, but what really struck me at the time was Mercury’s caduceus, the planets orbiting stars, and the playful rollercoaster infrastructure. As Aycock put it, her art represents “investigations into the process of visualizing and constructing pseudo-philosophical theories to explain the inexplicable phenomena of the universe.”

What makes this piece even more memorable for me is the fact that one of my favorite Art History professors, Jonathan Fineberg, contacted Aycock personally and helped site the sculpture outside the Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At least that was the story going around the Art History department.