Crescendo
2012
Italian Bardiglio Marble
108 x 136 x 44 inches
Mason Creek Corporation
Houston, TX
Shaped from a 48-ton block of richly veined Italian Bardiglio marble, Crescendo is one of the largest sculptures ever to be sited on water. Exhilarating in its monumental scale, dramatic curves, and vessel-like crescent, the stone is poised in a perpetual dance with the reflecting pool beneath. Likening the work’s arching form to an inverted cavern, Richard considers Crescendo to be an aestheticized representation of water’s sublime geologic force.
The monumental Crescendo is an exhilarating work as one of the largest sculptures sited on water. The effect of stone poised in a dance-like position on a moving reflecting pool has an almost magical quality, essentially reversing our intuitive understanding and perception of these two fundamental elements of our natural world. The forces of water and erosion in shaping the planet are aestheticised in the sculpture’s curving, arching form like an inverted cavern.
Crescent shaped, both concave and convex as though carved by wind and water, these opposing movements push outward and pull inward as gravity moves water over a fall.