By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

Dade drivers may have noticed, a couple of blocks north of the Trenton town square, a standing stone next to a pyramid, festooned with a primitive handprint on what looks like a petroglyphic Etch-A-Sketch, and being menaced, or something, by a boulder suspended above it. Such drivers may well have asked, “What the heck is that?”

The short answer is: Art. “Temporal Transect #2,” a sculpture by local artist Jerry Wallace, is the third installation of the Trenton Arts Council’s ongoing ArtScapes public art project. The sculpture was erected Dec. 8 on a site furnished by W.D. Thomas Enterprises, through grants from the Lookout River Foundation and from TAC with the support of the city of Trenton. 

TAC, a coalition headed by transplanted Manhattan artists Bob Dombrowski and Mary Petruska, currently of Wildwood, is staging a formal unveiling for the piece at noon Saturday at Thomas Enterprises’ Highway 11 site, 12700 N. Main Street, where it will remain on loan for six months to a year.

But for the long answer, let us go now to the artist himself. That’s not that far a trek: In the interest of full disclosure, let us begin by stipulating that she who pens these words said two significant ones – “I do” – some decades past to the creator of Temporal Transect #2, Jerry Wallace. 

There are reasons, perhaps, that spouses should not interview spouses, and not necessarily the obvious ones. In this case it is not so much a matter of nepotism as of the emphatic, not to say combative, Wallace style of marital discussion, making for interview excerpts like:

Q:  Do you want to talk about the significance of the name, Temporal Transect No. 2?

A:  No.

Q:  Will you describe how you built it?

A:  No!

Q:  Why do you have to be such a jerk?

A:  Well, why don’t you ask intelligent questions?

But what’s to be done? The Dade County Sentinel is not large enough to boast two art-beat reporters, and in a county where a new stop sign is a stop-the-presses headline, a bold installation like TT2 is not a story the Sentinel proposes to leave lying around attracting flies. So let us wade as best we can through the conjugal bickering and proceed with our interview, with your narrator as questioner and artist Jerry Wallace responding. Mostly.

Q: Well, what information, pray tell, are you in fact willing to part with?

A: My background is in animation and illustration, and those are both mediums that are used to tell stories. Sculpture is a new medium for me, but that aesthetic has kind of transferred over. There is definitely a story there, but I am not going to reveal all the details of it. That’s for people to see for themselves, or try to find out.

(Here the artist stressed that if you’re interested in following that story, please stop, and get out of your car. “While you can see it going down the street at 45 mph, it’s best to park and walk and observe it up close, because there are lots of details in it that you just don’t get from more than two feet away,” he said.

Park on the south side of the property, he urged, and watch out for trucks: Host business W.D. Thomas is a transport company.)

In any case, Temporal Transect #2 is a sculpture of three elements, the largest of which is a six-plus-foot-tall, heavily decorated piece that the artist calls a “menhir.” 

Menhir?

Q: Jerry. Where did you learn that word, how would you spell it, and what do you think it means?

A: A menhir is a standing stone, part of the traditional stone circles that were erected in Europe and across Britain. Nobody really knows the real purpose for them. They were either ceremonial structures or possibly astronomical structures for determining solstices, things like that. When there are two of them, with one over the top, that’s called a dolmen. Megalithic structures are one of the inspirations for my piece.

Q: In fact, there’s a lot of the ancient in this sculpture. Do you want to say anything about the petroglyphs, like the mark of the hand?

A: The handprint is the universal symbol of prehistoric art. It’s one of the first pieces of art that people made. Nobody knows if it’s a signature or clan symbol or just “I was here.” But they’re all over the world, everywhere that people made prehistoric art. It’s the most basic. It’s us. 

Q: So you’ve got the prehistoric thing going on here. But what about these more modern objects you have embedded in the stone?

A: They are found objects that I accumulated. Some of them are representative of our culture. Others are little incidental things, nuts and bolts and screws, the common detritus of our lives that are all around us.

Q: Yes, and when are you going to get it out of the driveway? Well, later. Meanwhile, can you name a few of these found objects and explain their significance?

A: No.  I would rather people go and discover these things for themselves. I definitely had some things in mind, but if I go ahead and explain it to them it will take away the experience of art. One of the great mysteries of art is Mona Lisa’s smile. If Leonardo had just come out and told people it was because –

(The Sentinel has truncated this answer in the interest of preserving the family-friendly atmosphere of this newspaper, and in confidence that it represents the purest speculation.)

Q: Anyway. Can you please – please! – say just a few words about the title of the piece, “Temporal Transect #2?”

A: A “transect” is a line, and “temporal” refers to time, so this is a line through time that connects our time to other times. 

The history of our planet is written in the geologic pages and in the fossil record, but there are things that are missing that we can’t figure out. As long as the earth spins, the geologic record will continue to be written with or without us. When we’re gone, it will be up to whatever or whoever comes after us to be able to figure it out.

Q: Whoa. So that’s the menhir. What about the other parts of the sculpture?

A: The other structure is the pyramid, with energy wands inside. The rod between them is the energy transfer device.

Q: And this boulder suspended above the menhir?

A: It’s like that saying we have down here in the Sand Mountain Zen Redneck Cult and Existentialist Barbecue Society: “It don’t matter.”

Existentialist BBQ? That seems an excellent place to leave it.

William Back, director of the Lookout River Foundation, said of this project: “We offer micro-grants to fund projects that are off the radar of the larger arts organizations. Jerry Wallace, who pushed edges he hadn’t before, is typical of the people we want to support.”   

Indeed.  If so, she who pens ’em must here conclude, with a certain amount of spousal pride, that that is possibly the only thing of which Jerry Wallace can be said to be typical.

The Saturday unveiling is free, and the public is invited to attend.