Mixed Media > Beyond the Wall

Beyond the Wall is a tribute to the collapse of the thick concrete barricade that had for years, from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989 divided the two Berlins. Thirty years after the wall came down, my piece is a celebration of the two Germanys now unified. The wing-like structures are cut from a German to English dictionary and cascade to either side of the convex magnifying glass that sits on top of the stack of books. The top two books are the colors of the German flag, black, red and yellow-orange. Looking down into the hole of each book, the viewer sees a web of roads, strange causeways that appear to be a microscopic view of human veins descending to the bottom of the books, where a small concave mirror reflects at once the viewer, the red pathways, and the cut sections of each book. The mirror sits on a road map whose surfaces have been worn away to reveal yet another map below, as if magnified vision alone has tunneled through to another world.