The Table with the
Steel Skirt


We're so free now -
It's the 20th century
Almost the 21st century.
Violence, change stalk the land.
We take our pleasure where we can
And beauty is as real as our minds.


This table came to be as I was thinking about what I could do with the deinstalled panels from the short-lived Camarillo project. The image of a steel skirt appeared in my imagination while I was bored in L.A. traffic. I ended up creating a new panel (in my mind’s eye) based on a verse I jotted down one morning.

The skirt is soft and seductive in the manner of Madonna and Marilyn Monroe, but in this case its function is to entice the viewer to savor the pleasures of the mind displayed in the patterning of the dyed wooden inlays. The colored patterns are a translation of the verbal rhythms of the poem, using the technique from the Camarillo Project.

This is only a model. Actual pleated stainless steel would be easier to manipulate to make the skirt more flouncey.