A Bridge Of Clay

Today we went to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento where we saw the stoneware sculpture The Bridge by the Taiwanese artist Ah Leon. This is an amazing twenty-meter long sculpture of a wooden bridge that has fallen into disrepair. Every bit of the bridge—the wooden planks, even the nails—is made out of fired ceramics, five tons of clay in all. The details are extremely realistic, down to the finest grain of the wood, and if you didn’t know it was made out of clay, you would be easily fooled. The installation of the bridge took three days.

Also in the exhibit were a number of smaller ceramic works, including teapots with a tiny vent in the handle to allow fine control of the pouring, and simulated platters of newly made tofu in a wooden tofu press.