Few people would notice the narrow gap—roughly six-inches wide and two-stories tall—between two 19th-century buildings across from the loading dock for the Rhodes Tower. Yet in this space Candace Black found the potential for a sculpture of warped architecture that responded to both the particulars of the site and to the overarching theme of time identified by the Finding Time program curators.

Black rendered the sculpture—a composite form suggestive of fragments of architectural details such as the dentils and moldings typical of buildings in the area—in dense plaster. (She modeled the dentils after those on the original Huntington Bank building on High Street just south of Broad Street.) The sculpture rested on the brick street and could be seen as an avalanche of sorts spilling from the roofline of the buildings to the ground. The gesture was clearly metaphorical; this was no fool-the-eye installation meant to suggest that actual masonry had tumbled to the ground. Rather, the stark white of the plaster read more as a slice of a glacier, an indication of the line Black would like to draw between historical and geologic time.

The site for this work is only a block north of the Ohio Statehouse, but it is a location full of contrasts that make it feel miles away. Here Columbus's tallest skyscraper, a state office building that stands as a monument to our identity as the capital of Ohio, butts up against modest brick buildings on a narrow street reminiscent of European cities. The tug of gravity and the implication of entropy in Buckle juxtaposed with the multistory office towers nearby perhaps reminded viewers that here, as everywhere, change is the only constant.

This Finding Time project was selected for an Americans for the Arts Public Art Network 2013 Year in Review Award.