48 | JUNE 23 • 2022 

RF: Your piece outside the 
Frankfurt museum is in a 
city where Jews are less than 
1% of the population, much 
like Grand Rapids. Most 
who visit Meijer Gardens 
and see your piece will not 
be Jewish. What do you hope 
they take away from the 
encounter?
AS: I hope they will see a 
work of art by the grandchild 
of a survivor and perhaps 
through accompanying text 
will see how that person 
experienced and translated 
the stories of his family and 
of his community. Of how he 
created his art and lived his 
life with those memories and 
with those stories. For me, 
it’s a very personal process 
and maybe they can read it 
through me. I cannot teach 
them or say “this is how it 
happened” because I was not 
there, and they weren’t, but I 
hope the sculpture will open 
a sort of dialogue to enrich 
their knowledge and their 
opinions.
RF: The title Ways to Say 

Goodbye raises all sorts of 
questions about the idea 
of saying goodbye to the 
past. Mourning is not about 
being focused strictly on 
the past, but on being able 
to move beyond it; not to 
forget, but not to be trapped 
by it. In that respect, a tree, 
though wounded in the 
past, promises growth in the 
future. 
AS: Just like the 
stolpersteine, we are offering 
an idea, a way of thought. 
I think it is much more 
effective to offer it rather than 
to point it out. I feel there are 
so many references within the 
piece: what trees represent 
in Judaism, the shattered 
glass of Kristallnacht, those 
memories, the title, who I am 
as an artist, the story of the 
Pestka family who sponsored 
the work. There are so many 
elements I hope will create a 
space for discussion.
RF: The Meijer Gardens 
site also brings the 
advantage of the four 
seasons. How did you use 

the site?
AS: We tried to define that 
space using a concrete path, 
but the hilltop still encloses 
the piece, allowing it to blend 
in. While the plaza provides a 
place to sit down, to hang out, 
so you are close to it, under 
it, you are also away from it at 
the same time. I think it’s true 
the tree will live there among 
nature more than if it had 
been situated on cement, as in 
Frankfurt.
RF: Tell us more about the 
sculpture.
AS: The piece weighs 2 
to 3 tons, but that’s because 
of the inside structure of 
the stainless steel, a very 
massive pipe. The aluminum 
itself is very light. And the 
glass weighs a lot as well. 
Structurally, aluminum 
cannot bear much weight, so 
they have to use proper steel 
piping for which they know 
the strength exactly, because 
the aluminum enclosure has 
no structural properties.

RF: Are sculptors also 
engineers?
AS: These days an 
artist just outsources that 
work. There are very good 
fabricators, but, of course, 
you need to know what 
you ask of them and how 
to ask it. Sometimes what 
I’m interested in is maybe 
extending the possibilities, 
stretching what’s possible. 
Often it’s those companies 
that take drawings from 
artists to build the piece. 
Today the artist’s life can 
be more one of directing, 
but I am really interested 
in the construction of 
things. For a lot of my more 
complicated works, I start 
by doing prototypes to try 
to see if they work, and then 
maybe outsourcing them to 
a fabricator. In this case, we 
did a lot of testing with a 
combination of aluminum 
and glass so that it felt right 
with the material and how it 
is held together. 

Prepping the 
sculpture for 
installation

An empty space 
memorial

ROB FRANCIOSI

DVIR GALLERY

continued from page 47

ARTS&LIFE
SCULPTURE

