Each piece in the ten-part MERIDIAN SERIES of outdoor sculptures requires a place --not just a location-- where it can sink its roots and, in so doing, invite people into its open spaces, where-nothing-is, and do exactly the same thing. Open spaces in these works are, as far as I’m concerned, empty until you are there: standing, sitting, walking, or visiting with others. Nonetheless, spaces resist being occupied. I make that almost impossible to happen. Why would I do that? Because the arcs and circles and variants thereof that define these open spaces won’t let it happen; instead, they stake out boundaries and make connections with everything in and near the sculpture, including you. The Meridian sculptures are grounded at a place, but they are also airborne; that is, the forms that define open spaces also release themselves and their spaces upward, and then . . . bring it all back again, you with it. Thus the root source for the title of this ten-part series of works: “meridian.” Everything you see in these sculptures comes straight from nature. Nothingis contrived, messed with, or taken from obscuria. That does not interest me.What interests me is what is there, what we all see every day, what is right in front of us, be it a tree branch, the leading edge of a leaf falling to the ground, the contour in the earth left by a pool of water that evaporated that morning, or the opening and closing distances between clouds passing overhead. These are things that interest me, because everything therein, including you, is connected to everything else: connectedness, inseparability, meridian. These sculptures will challenge you. Let them. Then you challenge them.“What is within will surround you.” I’ve borrowed that thought from the late poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. It goes to the heart of the Meridian Series.Add to that the following, because it undergirds the Meridian Series: as a child, about age eight, I knew my Dad “walked the iron,” as the expression still goes for iron workers who construct bridges and tall buildings. One day I asked him, “What do you do when you’re up high working and the wind blows?” The lack of hesitation in my Dad’s response had as much of a lasting impact on me as the brevity of the words he spoke:
“You lean into it,” he said. I step aside . . . and I leave you in good hands.

Ed McCullough