I have been living in the suburbs of Philadelphia since I was ten years old. At that time my neighborhood was surrounded by seemingly endless fields and forests, I spent most of my adolescence there. Slowly they have been shrinking and in the past four years I′ve watched the last of them disappear. In one soon to be parking lot I encountered a scene that burnt an image in my mind. There was a huge old white birch tree and I remember being sad to see it go. They paved all the way to its trunk. It wasn′t long before the tree died. It finished dropping its leaves and for one week it stood there - this pure white tree growing from a dark nothingness, perfectly summarizing the constriction of the world around me as I′ve grown up and lost my boyhood memories.

In this piece I tried to use as much symbolism as possible so that the viewer can read the piece in many different ways all of which are valid and almost always within the same overall idea. Even to me it conveys several different stories. The piece started from the idea that manned flight, as beautiful a gift as it is, has from its conception been primarily used for destructive purposes. I chose the White Crane because it was the bird that the Wright brothers most closely studied and based their research on. The plane that I chose to use was the Enola Gay, the B-29 that during the Second World War dropped the first atomic bomb- the devastation of which has never been matched. The two pieces both speak about an evolution of flight from its use to help sustain life to its growing ability to take it.

When approached, this piece has a seemingly playful quality almost beckoning for the viewers′ participation. But as the viewer walks around the piece they are shown its true nature, becoming aware that the puzzle they wanted to build was in fact the last thing they would want to help create. The purpose of this piece is not to shock or disturb the viewer; it is to caution them from acting on impulse and participating in things that they haven′t taken the time to understand.