All Kinds of Weather, 2018
wood, steel, and glue. 60”x60”x36”
LA Artcore:
Like a book, Chin explores material as a source of story telling, in relation to ancient wisdom structures and objects. The wood used for this sculpture was original grown by Napoleon Bonaparte with the purpose of building battleships for war, but then wooden battleships became obsolete with the technology of steel and the age of the industrial revolution. The tree was then used to build oak barrels for the sole purpose of aging and fermenting wine, the barrel was used to age wine for the 1973 barrel of California Winery Chateau Montelena in Napa Valley, which in 1976 won the "Judgment of Paris" blind taste test that put America on the map. In 2005 Chin acquired the barrels from a friend's father whom at the time was a wood dealer working for the hardwood company Macbeath in Berkeley, California. Chin's intention for the wood barrels were going to be for making wine and large taiko drums when he eventually decided to make a sculpture called "One Pinecone" for the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Museum's Botanical garden pine grove in 2016. Then the fire department ordered the pine grove to be cut down and Chin was asked to take his work back when he noticed scraps from the "One Pinecone" sculpture on the ground of his Downey studio were forming concentric circles around each other naturally so he decided to cut up the rest of the wood components of "One Pinecone" and create a structure that resembles the cross section of a tree which on many levels uncover the dendrochronology in more ways then one. The location of Chin's former studio in Downey where the sculpture was made was the former site for building USA military airplanes for World War II and birthplace of the Apollo Space Program. Where the material came from and traveled to become of great importance to Chin as he explored peaceful solutions for a material that could have potentially been used for War. The sculpture will continue to travel collecting history, and explore the realm of mystery.
