The Pinecrone

What lurks in the wilderness and the most remote areas of the American west? We’ve all heard a story or two passed around the flickering glow of campfires. It might have been the well known Bigfoot, the devious Jersey Devil, the goat-hunting Chupacabra, or the post-modern digital phenomena known as “The Slenderman.”

The Crone is a scarecrow-like sculpture built to provide an experience that doesn’t feel like a purposeful installation at all. When crossing paths with a Crone a person will feel that they’ve stumbled across a secret ritual, have found something raw and mysterious, or wandered into a forbidden place. From that initial shock, people are free to imagine their own stories, legends, and lore based on the installation.

Experiencing art can inspire action as well. Paranormal stories always carry an implicit warning. Cultures around the world tell stories of monsters that live near the lakes, streams and rivers. These monsters are notorious for pulling children to a watery death. While the creatures in these stories are fictional, they represents a very real danger. For an unattended child, simply falling into water would likely lead to drowning.

The Crone was created to inspire similar stories. A person might see one in the woods, a rocky path, or tucked away off a trail. Given these wild and remote locations, the aim is to inspire stories about natural conservation and stewardship; a little reminder that humans are guests when wandering the wilds.

“…an amazingly haunting piece! One of my favorites this year!”

Fabrication

The Crone’s figure was mapped out using a human skeleton as a template. The anatomy was subtly tweaked and exaggerated during the design phase so that the body’s proportions were just a little bit uncanny.

The fingers are significantly exaggerated into long, talon-like digits. Because of the installation’s height and the viewer’s perspective, the skull was enlarged to look the correct size from ground-level. A jawbone piece was added late into the design to both help affix the head to the tripod structure and to enhance the figure’s bound pose.

Construction was completed stick-by-stick. A spine was created, then shoulders, hips and a ribcage. These pieces, like in a human body, were complex and required the most amount of raw material. During the core’s construction arms and legs were built separately and then affixed.

Wild swings with hatchets and axes to provided a textured piece built with unhinged, maddened energy. Pieces that were built using power tools were roughed up in the same way to obscure any noticeable modern tool marks. Local wood was used to ensure that the sculpture blended with the environment and to give the appearance that it had been there an ambiguous amount of time.