Thistle in the Dream (To Louis Sullivan) 1956

Theodore Roszak's "Thistle in the Dream (To Louis Sullivan)" looks to me like something that has emerged from the deep, dark, depths! I imagine Roszak wrestling with the metal, coaxing it into these thorny, organic shapes. What was he thinking, I wonder, as he welded those spiky forms together? Was he trying to capture the dangerous beauty of nature, or perhaps the spiky and aggressive parts of our collective psyche? The texture is rough, almost crusty, like something dredged up from the bottom of the ocean. It makes me think of David Smith, and the tough, post-war American scene that they were both involved in. Maybe he wanted to capture the feeling of being alive in a scary world? It’s gnarly, it’s weird, and it’s definitely not pretty in a conventional sense. It’s like he's saying, "Here it is, the raw, the uncomfortable, the thing that pricks you when you get too close." And that, my friends, is where the good stuff often hides. These artists are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring each other's creativity across the ages, inviting us to keep our eyes open!