Conceptually, my breakthrough came when I began to see the explosion, the island, and the river as single entity—in the moment of the explosion. I decided that rather than a traditional monument, such as an equestrian statue where you have a sculpture set on top of a carved base, I would try to create a monument where the base and sculpture were ONE—the material of the base and the sculpture would be the same, held together with no obvious means other than the material itself.
I began to model the shape of the explosion and began to see the sculptural meaning of the work as a study in displacement.
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