Metabolism and Mortality / O2

Performance furnace/kiln tableau - Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA, 1992

Left, firing of Furnace, 9 ft. h. x 12 ft. w., steel, refractory cement, beech branches, propane

Center: post fring of right, Greenhouse, center: Furnace, and right: truncated, dead beech tree.

Right: Greenhouse , 8 ft. dia., steel, glass, thermometers,

Sited along what was the of the drip line and furthest lateral extent of a large, now dead beech tree on the Tyler Campus are the the project’s two principal elements: Furnace and Greenhouse (also known as Furnace Element and Greenhouse Element). These two instruments symbolically represent the beech tree's past life and current death systems on a macro-molecular level. Furnace and Greenhouse were envisioned as ions of an oxygen molecule (O2) separated by the primal and arboreal forces of entropy and dissolution but are still united and activated by similar thermal

processes: the Furnace by ignition of fossil fuels developed by the photosynthesis of sunlight in ancient forests and their subsequent geologic distillation, and the Greenhouse by the collection and entrainment of contemporary solar energy. The solar heat within the Greenhouse is measured differentially from the outside atmosphere by it’s internal thermometers (a span of as much as 50 F. between the inner and outer environments has been noted).


Furnace Projects
, Constance Lewallan;

Kiln Projects: Material and Process Experiments in/of the Landscape, John Roloff