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Years ago around 1981 the Ford sedan appeared, having been chopped quite formally into 8 relatively even sections along with its top, perfunctorily dumped in the driveway of my Brooklyn studio. I couldn’t help myself so, of course, I dragged them in. After all my building use to be a chop-shop anyway, so it could be imagined these fragments were just homing. Perhaps I just empathize with such objects as some do with stray cats. They just lay there for years as I considered what might be or might not be their most appropriate re-presentation. Ultimately after burning and sandblasting when only the steel skins remained I sprayed them with pure white epoxy and high gloss clear acrylic polyurethane, as would be appropriate to a high-end restoration. Subsequent sanding developed the ‘fragile’ eggshell-like appearance of its surface.

All the sections are placed together simply separated by one foot in their natural order with its top on top.
Once prized objects, our tanks, cars and trucks, found desert sanded, forlornly rusting, where they were last dumped may at times be reborn, adopted as new digs by other animals and so surviving and serving yet another turn.

Although conceived as resting on a carpet of rock salt threatening its long-term survival, this pictured installation did not include this element.
Ibis, the elegant, silent white bird of Africa, sacred to the Egyptians, joins this piece as title, invoking its stillness.