The Staff of Asclepias is a social and environmental sculpture
conceived by artist Erik DeLuca during
his stay at the Corsicana Artist & Writer Residency (also known as 100W), which
offers residencies to artists and writers from around the world. DeLuca worked with several members of the Corsicana community
to design a series of way stations for the monarch butterfly. The monarch is
the Texas state insect and has fascinated DeLuca since he arrived in Texas.
DeLuca
converted the Samuels Building, an 1880s mercantile building two blocks from
100W, into a nursery for milkweed. Because monarch caterpillars feed exclusively
on the plant, adult butterflies migrating north from Mexico in the spring depend
on it to lay their eggs. The growing scarcity of milkweed in the wild has
contributed to a drastic 80% decrease in the monarch population. The milkweed DeLuca
raised – some 1,000 plants – has been distributed to land at the Hebrew
Cemetery in Corsicana and to Sweet Pass Sculpture Park. The exhibit title
references the scientific genus of the milkweed, Asclepias.
The
exhibition at the ANTEROOM, a window gallery across the street from 100W,
includes a sample table with milkweed and a magenta grow light from the Samuels
Building nursery and a rendition of the song Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler
on the Roof playing at dusk and dawn. The exhibition at Sweet Pass
Sculpture Park includes some 300 of the milkweed plants raised by the artist,
which he invited people to plant at the park in early June in accordance with
social distancing measures. The milkweed garden is accompanied by a time-based
light and sound installation that plays daily at sunrise and sunset. It
includes the same rendition of the song at the ANTEROOM and a 100-plus-foot horizontal
white LED light sculpture suspended above the ground, invoking the staff of
Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. The north-south line of the light
sculpture gestures toward the monarchs’ migratory path from Mexico to Canada
while conveying ideas of prosperity, health and rejuvenation.
Bastidas
said the project exemplifies the Pollock Gallery’s goal of expanding its
programming beyond its walls to provide additional opportunities for SMU art
students and the community to broaden their understanding of public art and
community engagement.
“The Staff of Asclepias is
ambitious in both scale and impact,” said Bastidas. “It engages with
questions of migration and the powerful indirect interactions that can control
entire ecosystems. DeLuca’s endeavor to place nature’s patterns at the center
of his work offers a new possibility of solidarity, as he dedicates his
practice to the service and understanding of vital non-human networks.”
