The Pearl

4' DIAMETER SPHERE STUDY | CONSCIOUS CONSUMPTION CREATION ACT, C.C.C.A.

One month of Life is Art Collective residency waste, plaster, salvaged mica and salvaged paint.

In the old world, the sculpture student must first perfect the form of a sphere. Again and again the student embarks on the impossible quest for the divine form.

A Pearl is a defense mechanism to a potentially threatening irritant, a finding of perfection in disaster. They are used in many cultures as panaceas to hostile ailments and are universally collected as precious gemstones.

Thirty days of communal life in Eiffel Society went into The Pearl. On day one of the Life is Art Collective residency, Lopez eliminated the trashcans. Artists and their guests were forced to save every piece of refuge from life lived in the glass octagon. The (many) empty wine and pastis bottles became drinking glasses; food scraps were composted into Eiffel's grounds in support of the farm, and everything else- plastic, string, foil, fingernails and hair- was consumed by the Pearl. Each evening, Lopez and the Collective rolled the detritus into a string wrapped sphere. Over the month it grew in concentric spheres until it required multiple hands to manipulate. At the end of the residency, Lopez coated the Pearl with plaster expert William Murphy and finished the spherical study with a mixture of mica and salvaged paints.

Persian poet Sa'di said that "God has servants like rain. They fall to the land and create corn, they fall to the sea and create Pearls."

The Vanity
a collaboration with Elliott Coon