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<\/a><\/p>\nI found an explanation on the website of the Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation (http:\/\/dsmpublicartfoundation.org\/public-art\/three-cairns\/<\/a>). Just below is their great picture of the central cairn at the Des Moines Art Center. \u201cCairns,\u201d Public Art tells us, are \u201cstone structures [or markers] that identify a place of great importance. Their dry-stone construction represents an engineering feat as well as artistic creativity. The process of shaping and stacking the stones into a simple oval shape is challenging and intense. The form symbolizes fullness and ripeness, time and energy, loss and endurance.\u201d The Foundation also tells us that this is the largest project in the Western Hemisphere by British artist Andy Goldsworthy.<\/p>\n The photo, by Doug Millar, shows the central cairn at home among Iowa grass and trees. Goldworthy\u2019s placement of the two hollow-out stone frames isn\u2019t random. One points toward New York, a matching cairn outside the Neugerger Museum of Art; the other points west to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla and the cairn my friend\u2019s son showed off for us. The limestone for each comes from long before its physical home was inhabited by people calling their place \u201cIowa.\u201d<\/p>\n Lots going on here. Not one place but three, not three places but a continent, not one time but millennia, all crafted with the precise skills of a contemporary worker of stone. I like to imagine the work we do at the university like that. These are exam days, demanding precise thinking and some memory. But, our Mission Statement reminds our students, the point is not the exam or the grade; the point is a lifetime of their citizenship in a world that is vast and beloved of God.<\/p>\n While getting reacquainted with the Cairns, I opened a poem feed that lands in my inbox each day to find a gift from Emily Dickenson. Just below my signature, you will find Emily Dickenson\u2019s 12 line poem about an unnamed bird. Which form of beauty opens me to deeper stillness this mid-April day in 2017, the trans-national sculpture or this poem from the 19th century? Answer? \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n Looks like spring rains today, encouraging grass and flowers and trees to do their thing.<\/p>\n Have a blest day.<\/p>\n john st sj<\/p>\n Hope is the thing with feathers And sweetest in the gale is heard; I\u2019ve heard it in the chillest land, Wednesday, April 22 \u2014 Three Cairns \u2013 sculpture \u201cCairns [are] stone structures [or markers] that identify a place of great importance.\u201d This little boy exploring a large stone egg got me wondering the way art does. Two artists here, the … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n
\nToday\u2019s Post<\/strong> \u00a0\u201cHope\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThat perches in the soul,
\nAnd sings the tune without the words,
\nAnd never stops at all,<\/p>\n
\nAnd sore must be the storm
\nThat could abash the little bird
\nThat kept so many warm.<\/p>\n
\nAnd on the strangest sea;
\nYet, never, in extremity,
\nIt asked a crumb of me.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nEmily Dickinson
\nDecember 10, 1830 \u2013 May 15, 1886<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"