Walter McConnell’s two major bodies of work strike at the core of human ambition—the desire to possess. More acquisitive than magpies, more daring than Prometheus, we shape and reshape our world through ownership—either physically (collecting and hoarding) or, if that fails, intellectually (ordering and classifying). Even the wonders of the natural world and the mysteries of the universe can be captured, reduced to graspable objects tailored to our hands and minds. Parts stand for wholes; souvenirs replace experience. The facsimile becomes the real, and we seldom notice the switch, because what we have determines what is real, even if only for a short time. …see the entire article in the print version of April’s Sculpture magazine.
