I consider this one of the weirdest tin pieces Dad did after he made the decision to stay within the ceiling tin medium. It’s very different from the series of flower sculptures he did during the same time period, shortly after September 11th.

I wanted to call this ugly when I first saw it at age 15–the unfinished metal seemed to mock the soft-edged flower shapes. It was a classic case of “I don’t get it.” When the lights were turned out in the gallery, it had a menacing profile, with the stems bent at Medusa-like angles. The physical texture itself was also different—while the painted tin had its invisible sharp corners and required full attention when handling, Flowers From the Rust Belt was treacherous in its entirety. The raw tin was abrasive and offered no reprieve from possibly scratching or scraping yourself. I gave it a wide berth whenever it was displayed because of its tendency to snag loose clothing or an unguarded arm.

My mother agrees that it’s one of the oddest works because of the choice to leave the metal untreated and also leave it looking unfinished. She also says that it captures the swathe of states that it’s named after. It looks brittle, blanched, parched: in short, it mirrors exactly what its title describes.

Usually, Dad’s work has a beauty that is self-explanatory, full of color, with the swell of nailheads just below the surface that glimmer. Flowers absolutely refuses to follow along. While the other sculptures are bursting with life, the flora in Flowers appears to be dying, with one last attempt at reaching sunward, while some have already wilted.

I guess it’s being older, but now I’m discovering the poetry in the gestures of the cluster of rusting, dying flowers. They look like a lost cause, but there’s still a fight in them. There’s a defiance and battle between the nature of the material and its bracingly dull hue and the odd and delicate way that the flowers seem to be losing life. I know that my father had to take a long consideration about not treating the metal like he had the others, but what he was thinking exactly, I’m not sure. Perhaps an experiment in form and function but also grappling with his fear of not knowing what happens when we die or how the process is supposed to go. We still have boxes and boxes of ceiling tin that were left unused after he went to Hawaii and after he died. I don’t know what we’re waiting for, but many of the sheets of untreated metal now resemble the texture and color of Flowers, and I don’t know what that says about dying, exactly, but it eases the absence of the artist who won’t be back to use them.

- Misa Kobayashi