-Cow- still bank c. 1920

This is a cast iron still bank shaped like a cow, made by the A.C. Williams Company. It’s got this overall golden color, but it is complex in its materiality, like a landscape painting, with a wonderful build up of texture and tone in the surface of the metal. I find myself focusing on the middle of the cow's back. The gold color is worn away there, and you see a hint of the iron underneath. That spot is like a metaphor for art itself – art as a place of wear, of touch, of exchange. It shows how a piece of art is always changing, always becoming something else, through us. Like with all art, there is an ambiguity in this object, and it makes me think of Haim Steinbach's readymade sculptures. It’s something that looks both familiar and strange, functional and useless, all at the same time. It's a cow! It's a bank! It's a sculpture! It’s art!