Grass Ballet by Owen William Fritts

The Grass Ballet sculptures are inspired by the movement of wind through fields of grasses, motion appearing as waves through water. Grass Ballet sculptures capture this through height, slenderness and kinetic movement. The blades taper and flow into the sky pulling ones gaze upward while the heavy boulder bases offer smooth seating and a place of reflection under a protective canopy. Children love to run through the aluminum blades playing lice mice in a field.

A deeper narrative and teaching opportunity in Grass Ballet sculptures is the literal representation of community in its organic based structure. Grass grows in tufts, groupings of individual blades. The blades in a tuft bear upon each other in the face of wind and weather gaining strength through numbers. The tallest support the weaker, the outer shield the inner, the older fall away as the new spring upward to continue the community, the collective whole is stronger than the individual. Furthermore tufts act as hamlets in the field, as more tufts grow and interlink they form a corollary to villages, towns, cities and nations. A field of grass can be looked upon as an entire planet of smaller groupings, all the way down to a single blade.