A thing described sometimes is a thing not seen.
Material: aluminum, PVC, paint
Dimensions: 43″h x 35″w x 64.5 “l
I could have easily named this piece “Untitled” before I thought of Bobby Timmon’s melody “Dat Dere”. I remembered a line from Oscar Brown Jr’s interpretation of the melody “…can I have that big elephant over there?” He was describing something indescribable…music notes, an abstraction. So, I named my sculpture “Dat Dere” like “…that big ol’ yellow sculpture over there.”
The idea of using PVC in my work took root when I was a lab technician at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, IL and I continued to use this material when I moved to Asheville, NC. It was here that I exhibited “Dat Dere” (misspelled “Dat Thar”) in August of 2007 at the YMI Cultural Center.
The piece is constructed of sandblasted aluminum plate polished on the exterior edges and black enameled aluminum fence post caps. I chose the same colors used by the Japanese Pokeman company for their fictional character Pikachu. At the time Pikachu debuted, I was amazed why thousands of adults would wait outdoors in the cold to buy this product. I concluded that color was one of the important reasons. I stole.
Larry Paul King 