Gros Michel

Patinated bronze (five elements)

Dimensions vary

2015

I grew up in Florida, where the Gros Michel (“Big Mike”) banana grows bountifully, wildly. It’s a kitschy, erotic botanical, the rock ballad of fruit. A flowering stalk spills forth from a shady trunk, sprouting the fruits in an action that feels so urgent, exposed, emotive and pure. I wanted to capture the implied musicality by rendering the form in a heavy gauge—bronze—something unaffected by time, and not following the laws of bananas. Instead they follow the laws of artifice resulting in the construction of an abstract form, materially vital, blank totems of sexual desire and laughter.