Ore

1″x1.5″, found objects

Every yearn we spend a week at Taconic state park, exploring the woods, building campfires and swimming in the ore pit. I usually collect beautiful blue slag remnants from the smelting that happened here for decades, but this trip I’ve had my eye out for rusty metal. The bigger pieces can be welded, but this little bottle cap found a second life in a pendant, along with bright golden beads. They both make me think of the lifecycle of metal, including so much of it that happened here in this park: pulling stone out of the ground, turning it into metal, and having that metal slowly break down over time. (Thanks to my son for some expert photo editing help!)