Rock and Tree Sculptures, 1987

Collaboration in art is a rare coincidence of idea and personality-- two people finding a common area of vision that they can share and develop.

Brad Miller, quite baldly, makes rocks in tromp l'eoil ceramic. Brad Davis, a painter, has been examining the expressive forms of trees and here for the first time translates them into bronze. Together they have created a series of timeless desert landscapes that combine each other's talents into a singularly potent image.

These austere sitepopulated by individual or groups of trees become symbols of permanence, isolation, tenacity and evoke a spiritual presence and moral vigor. Juxtaposing the changeless rocky peaks with the frozen energy of survival-against-all-odds, these landscapes speak of a primordial and pure beauty-- before man and before culture: a dream of the natural and the essential. It is not difficult to sink into the peace of this location or identify with the strength of these forms.

But these pieces exist as sculptures as well as image. While admittedly

"pictorial", they portray strong formal contrasts of the massive and linear. They activate a surprisingly large sculptural space by the thrust of the forms and the dynamic relationship of the various parts. Surprising, disappearing: and reappearing these forms condense an actual experience of the landscape.

Matisse's armchair, the mountain peaks of Chinese painting, the Zen gardens of Kyoto, the anchorite caves of Turkey-- can we find past retreats in art and culture that prepare us for these pieces? Can we escape the strain of the ironic, the exhaustion of parody and the nihilism of the arch in these small sculptural reveries? Can we take courage in these roots and limbs holding their own on the rocky brink?

In that place the sound of golden metal is urgent,

It is like a copper tree withstanding the constant gales,

This is my love, I won't reject it.

Qu Qiubai "Iron Flower" 1923

Brad Davis