Standing Icons:
A Journey through Time, Color and Vertical Space
Earlier this spring, I was accepted into an art show back in my home state of Minnesota. I looked at the work I had: swimming pools, Joshua trees, desert light, and thought, “I better get busy making saleable art.” So I turned to what I know: memory. Most of my Minnesota memories are rooted in youth, and that became my starting point.
The first shift was chromatic. I moved away from the saturated sunshine of the desert and into a softer palette, something more aligned with Midwestern restraint, and with the emotional tone of remembering. You can read about that initial pivot in my Memories Relived blog.
But as the deadline loomed, I pushed deeper. I began to question: Who’s doing the remembering? Is it older me, looking back? Younger me, still inside it? Or older me imagining what younger me remembers?
That inquiry led to three new works: Quiet Giant, Forgotten, and Access: Restricted. Each piece builds on past ideas: solitary trees, horizontal landscapes, chromatic restraint, but shifts the lens from organic memory to infrastructural myth. The trees became towers. The landscapes became transmissions. The memory became a broadcast.
🟩 The Quiet Giant
A water tower from my hometown, rendered in green and blue: shadowed, sloped, and quietly monumental. It’s the tallest thing in town, but no one ever talks about it.
I returned to Jordan last month on a quick inspiration trip. As a child, the tower was persona non grata—hidden inside the cemetery, off-limits and unspoken. We never went there. It wasn’t until high school, when I played Memorial Day services with the marching band, that I even knew exactly where it stood.
The question lingered: Is this a good giant or an evil one? Once I realized it provided water for the town, it became clear, it’s a good giant. Just a quiet one. A silent protector against low water pressure and mildew. A sentinel. A watcher. A monument to silence.
This piece began with a suggestion to vary horizontal lines and explore vertical light. That led me to rethink my icons, not as trees, but as architectural memory. The tower became a character. Not heroic. Not ominous. Just quietly present.
🟨 Forgotten
If Quiet Giant is younger Terry viewed by current Terry. joy remembered and still felt, then Forgotten is the inverse. A current image that triggers a saddened memory. Older Terry looking back, reminded that he is, in fact, older Terry.
A windmill in a yellow field. The barn is gone. The house is gone. Only the spinner remains. It doesn’t generate power, it generates memory. The sepia tones suggest aftermath, not nostalgia. It’s what’s left after Dorothy leaves. Or maybe what she forgot to take with her. A kinetic ghost. A vertical icon that breathes.
Time travel through memory is messy. But it matters. Because memory isn’t just what happened, it’s how we feel about what happened, now. And sometimes, the spinner spins differently depending on who’s watching.
🟥 Access: Restricted
If you’ve been playing along at home: Quiet Giant was blue and green, adjacent hues, grounded in joy. Forgotten moved to yellow and orange, warmer, more melancholic. That leaves us with red and purple. The emotional climax. The chromatic edge.
The subject’s placement has shifted too: upper right, middle left, now lower center. A descent. A grounding. A signal pulling us down into something deeper.
A radio tower blinking red into a purple sky. Anchored by cables. Surrounded by stars. It’s not clear who it’s transmitting to, or who’s trying to listen. The title suggests conspiracy, but the tone is emotional. This isn’t paranoia. It’s a broadcast from memory itself.
Radio towers are strange emotional machines. They can be comforting; lights watching over you. Or terrifying; alien or governmental agencies reading your thoughts. And sometimes, that duality is the same thought, whether you’re a child or an adult.
This piece is the most theatrical. It stages the tension between terrestrial memory and alien longing. Is the tower part of a government grid? An alien relay? A child’s dream? We don’t know. That’s the point.
These icons don’t just stand—they perform. Each one marks a moment in time, a shift in emotional weather, a chromatic phase of memory. From the quiet joy of The Quiet Giant, to the melancholic breath of Forgotten, to the encrypted transmission of Access: Restricted, this journey through time, color, and vertical space is less about resolution and more about reception. The archive doesn’t ask to be understood. It asks to be felt. To be received. To be remembered differently, depending on who’s listening.
