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Description

Large ceramic sculpture of half of a giant bean pod (part a) with 8 ceramic beans (parts b-i) of different sizes that sit inside the open pod, filling it from end to end. Pod is dark brown with a light pink-off white tip at one end. Interior of pod has symbols etched into spaces that match those marked on one side of the beans that fit in each part of the pod. Beans are all a light pink to off-white colour.

Narrative

The artists' statement from the 2005 "Transformations Ceramics" exhibition reads: "The Encoded Megabean is a larger than life smoke-fired pod containing burnished porcelain beans that are encoded with symbols of the wanderer, branch, circle, square, crystal, spiral, triangle and ray. Informed by the concepts found in "Chaos Theory" some of these symbols represent the building blocks of nature, the elemental forms from which everything in existence is derived. Its superimposed scale suggests the possibility of genetic interference in our ever-developing world. [It] is a metaphor for our fundamental relationship to this very primal concept of existence, declaring that humans can never overcome nature, despite our ever-growing connection to technology." The sculpture was published in, and the cover image for, "TransFormations: Ceramics 2005 (Potters Guild of British Columbia)" by C.E. Mayer, a publication for the above exhibition, held at the Burnaby Art Gallery (page 29).