Dream of Flight

Joy Taylor
Dream of Flight
240 Hand-cut foil leaves
2008- 2012

Cascading from within three light-filled ceiling wells are hundreds of over-sized leaves in shimmering blue, gold and green. In Dream of Flight, the artist recalls watching one autumn day as a gingko tree lost all of its leaves at once. Over the course of only a few minutes, every leaf drifted to the ground, creating a bare skeleton of branches above and a rich golden skirt on the ground below. In the midst of that shower, she observed the leaves as they seemed to relax their grip one by one, let go, slowly hover and descend. In every season, we can see leaves pulled from their branches and flung high, tossed with the wind at great distances before they find their final resting place. In Dream of Flight, each leaf is halted in its journey so that viewers can leisurely contemplate the shapes, patterns and play of light that unfold when time stands still. Travelers going toward or coming from their own mid-air suspension may be reminded that flight is wondrous both as a force of nature and a mechanical invention.