Edwina Sandys
Eve's Apple, 1998
Painted steel, 365 x 177 x 150 centimetres
Eve's Apple displays Edwina Sandys continued interest in positive and negative space. This very feminine hand with its polished fingernails is constructed out of three separately cut planes of steel. Approaching the sculpture from the side, the piece begins as a series of two-dimensional straight lines, but as the viewer comes closer, more angles begin to develop, and the work gains a third dimension, a depth which reaches its fullness only when the viewer is staring directly into the centre of the hand.
Eve's Apple captures that moment in the biblical story just after Eve has taken her important bite from the fruit of knowledge. It is a complex turning point, an intersection in which a certain kind of knowledge is achieved while another kind of innocence is lost. The sculpture represents such tensions with its own construction and the perpetually shifting interplay of light and shadow it creates. At every different time of day, the sculpture's multi-layered surface casts different patterns, unique combinations of darkness and light. The apple is displayed prominently, held almost proudly in the fingertips, showing off the marking of its bite. Like most of Sandys' work, Eve's Apple is defined by what is missing. Here, we are presented with that famous cut of fruit that divides our innocence from experience, the absent bite that simultaneously offered and took away.
About Edwina Sandys
A renowned novelist, painter and sculptor, Edwina Sandys (pronounced "Sands") was born in England and lived for many years in Tuscany, Italy, before moving to New York City where she now lives. A "citizen of the world" in more ways than one, Sandys' work occupies a position of central importance in the closely related realms of international art and politics.
Her work has always reflected a strong social consciousness, focusing on several key issues of contemporary society: child; family; war and peace; woman; and the environment. Her monumental marble sculptures have been commissioned by the United Nations and are located at their offices in Rio de Janeiro, Geneva, Vienna and New York City.
In 1990, her political and artistic passions were combined once again in a major piece entitled Breakthrough, which is on display at Fulton, Missouri's Westminster College. This sculpture, which is constructed from eight massive sections of the Berlin Wall, features male and female forms cut out from the wall's concrete surface. The work invites its viewers to walk through a once impassable barrier and has been visited by both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.