Artist's Psychobabble - take with a grain of salt. Form your own impressions.

(Elk Cross) is based on a providential find of an elk skull near the Colorado/Utah border. My father was bicycling on the side of the highway when he spotted a pair of elk skeletons in the ditch. The next year we went back and climbed into the ditch to examine them, possibly victims of poachers. The larger one had its head cut off but the younger "spike elk" had been left alone, apparently unworthy as a trophy. I took its head, packed it in a large box, and sent it to California to await resurrection as an art object, leaving the rest of its bones to return to the earth. The skull was given new life with coats of sun-gold and blood-red paint, a black arrow circling its eye and ascending over the forehead. It was mounted on a "shield" composed of a twig wreath and a cruciform assemblage of galvanized pipes. A painted spark plug from the heart of a car was precariously hung from one antler. A trinity of blue cyanotype hearts were attached to three arms of the cross, leaving the top arm to point upwards.

All images copyright 2008 Kendra Harness/Lost Angeles Rubber Works