Even Walls Can Move
Cor-ten steel and recycled bricks
15' x 30' x 4'
[Click images to view each larger.]
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I wanted to share with you a new project I recently completed in Macon, GA. Even Walls Can Move is a site specific sculpture commissioned by the Macon Arts Alliance for the Bicentennial Park.
This sculpture embodies Macon's complex history through its materials and form. The combination of weathered Cor-ten steel and recycled bricks creates a dialogue between strength and transformation.
The brick wall, breaking apart and taking flight, symbolizes Macon's struggle with its past. These bricks—materials deeply connected to Macon's industrial history and architectural identity—represent the literal and figurative walls that once separated communities.
The rusted steel figurative elements carrying the brick wall in the form of a boat evoke the painful but necessary process of confronting entrenched systems of inequality. Just as the steel appears to bend and transform the rigid brickwork, so too has Macon's community worked to bend the arc of its history toward justice and inclusion.
The sculpture's title—Even Walls Can Move—offers a message of hope and possibility. Walls that once seemed permanent and immovable can change, adapt, and even transform into something that resembles wings or a boat. This transformation suggests that reconciliation is possible, that hardened positions and divisions can soften over time.
By placing this work in Bicentennial Park, a public space accessible to all citizens, the sculpture invites the entire community to witness and participate in this ongoing transformation. It acknowledges the hurt of the past without being defined by it, suggesting that from the raw materials of history—however painful—something new and uplifting can emerge.
Ilan Averbuch
