, The Palm at the End of the Parking Lot, 1995

annealed hammered aluminum, stainless steel hardware, trunk and branches of a dead walnut tree

Robert Lobe has described his sculptures as involving an interrupted, sacrificed-Nature that is not just borrowed, but violated. His works are created in nature and often reinstalled elsewhere as a sculptural echo of natural form. Inspired by this wildness and disorganized aspect of nature, Lobe’s The Palm at the End of the Parking Lot,1995, is a battered, aluminum-wrapped walnut trunk that exemplifies his continued interest in the violence of nature and obliterates the formal distinction between nature and technology with a battered layer of armor plate. Yet Lobe also preserves and protects the tree, as if technology is strong enough to reverse the ravages it has visited upon the landscape.

Laumeier Sculpture Park Commission with funds from the Mark Twain Laumeier Endowment Fund

Location: South Lawn