Marguerite Elliot

Growing up on a small farm in rural Virginia, I spent many hours walking through fields and along stream banks. This was my first experience of deeply connecting to the earth. I feel a deep affinity with nature and the natural cycle of life. My art today has a direct connection to my years growing up in the country. As an artist, I work with steel and natural objects such as seedpods, leaves, and small stones. Although the intense heat of my welding torch transforms the steel, melting and bending it, even steel is transitory, eventually rusting away to nothing.

Concerned with the current environmental destruction, loss of species, and irrevocable environmental changes taking place all over the world, my work functions as both a reliquary and a shrine, to what is lost or soon may be lost.

SENTINELS: PROTECTORS OF WILD AND BEAUTIFUL PLACES

My new series of large outdoor public sculptures is titled Sentinels. My sentinels keep watch or stand guard over our sacred lands but also symbolize the interface between technology and the environment. Inspired by the ubiquitous cell phones towers in our lives today, they also incorporate iconic images from ancient civilizations. Drawing energy from the earth, these Sentinels simultaneously broadcast warnings about the climate destruction we now face, while sending out waves of healing energy