Prometheus' Hearth

HEIGHT 16 INCHES (40CM) POLISHED STAINLESS STEEL 1994

The Hearth was Modern Man's first Home, and the light from the fire must have turned the dark evenings into the classroom for speech. The Miracle of Communication is the tool of our success as a Species.

The English word Hearth is magic, for if you take away an H you are left with either Heart or Earth. Only through loving our Earth with our Hearts will we be able to survive.

I wanted to build a symbolic cave fire, where the precious flame of knowledge could be nursed, so it could lighten the darkness of superstition that surrounds us. Prometheus' Hearth. I have long admired the tiles from the Alhambra Palace, in Granada, Spain. One called the Andalusian Pattern, is particularly pleasing to the eye. The sides of the tile are number 7 of Hogarth's Lines of Grace. In this case they are made up of the arcs of 6 circles, which are part of a figure of 10 intersecting circles. I found that these beautiful tiles fitted together as a tetrahedra.

Prometheus' Hearth brings back many fond memories of my nights in the Australian Outback, camped under the Southern Cross, beside a blazing camp fire. Thousands of years ago our ancestors did the same thing, and the artists amongst them invented Symbolism, as a way of providing answers to the questions they were beginning to ask about the "purpose of their existence". We are still asking the same questions, and still need Symbols to help us with our understanding of the Universe in which we live.

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