The Spectrum

Issue date: 10/6/05 Section: Campus Art (Online)

David Philips, Nothing Gold Can Stay, 1992

David Philips has been creating public and private sculptural commissions for more than thirty years. In his work, Philips aims to utilize the elements of nature as a springboard for conceptual manipulations and he uses a wide spectrum of materials including stone, metal, cast glass, plants, water, paving stones and light  The venues for his work are equally varied: subway stations corporate offices, playgrounds, parks, hotels and universities, including Sacred Heart, where his Nothing Gold Can Stay was installed in 1992.

Located outdoors in Scholars Commons, Nothing Gold Can Stay was inspired by the Robert Frost poem of the same title:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The artwork is an exploration of memory. Leaves are cast in bronze using the lost wax method, and each vein and detail is immortalized in a lifeless but perfect duplicate of an original leaf. Each year ,as the real leaves of the surrounding trees turn golden and fall, covering the sculptural cast leaves, they will turn brown and wither away leaving once again, the bronze memory of a leaf.

Nothing Gold Can Stay is composed of two groupings of five concrete/bronze seating blocks. Each grouping has its line of blocks and a certain number of leaves represented on it, and even though the groups are in two separate places, on two elevations, they are connected in an implied diagonal line, with the same space separating each block.  There is, moreover, a noticeable progression/regression of motifs. Thus, on the first block in the first grouping there are no leaves; on the second there is one leaf, on the third there are two leaves; on the forth there are three leaves; on the fifth there are eight leaves, and on the sixth there is again just one leaf. In the second grouping, the first block has three leaves; the second has one leaf; the third has two leaves; the forth has none; the fifth has two; and the sixth has four. So while there is really no distinct pattern in the changing amount of leaves represented on the blocks, their appearance, disappearance and reappearance unites the strewn blocks across the commons.

Nothing Gold Can Stay also extends to the entrances of the adjacent residence halls. Each threshold features a bronze medallion with the same sugar maple leaf motif, placed in the brickwork, one leaf for Jefferson Hill Building number one, two leaves for number two, and so on.

Our initial reaction to this work was that it was very plain,
just raised leaves that were bronzed on top of a box. Then we researched it further and we came to the conclusion that it meant a little more than that. In the poem, the gold leaves represent innocence and youth and perhaps the art work represents the college students of Sacred Heart University who are in the process of change and will soon will be leaving, as the title of the work states, Nothing Gold Can Stay.

Also, when you look at this installation, you think of the trees and their leaves and the fall season and the fact that no leaves are going to stay and it will soon be winter. We came to the conclusion that the leaves represent change and transition, and if you think about it, it is a sad piece, because we as students come here for four years and then we move on with our lives and we are always constantly changing, so these leaves represent us in a way.

This artwork by David Philips, Nothing Gold Can Stay, has a lot
of meaning. It represents the fall season and change and the students who are constantly making these changes. The piece is timeless and the poem brings out what the piece truly represents.

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