See this recent review of her work (a jewel among the routinely mediocre "public art") at Madison Square Park.

-- Edward Tufte

Note the rock hammer and the swiss army knife for scaling in the geological images below. Source: L. Paul Knauth, "Signature required," Nature, 442 (2006 August 24), 873-874.

Here's a redesign of the presentation above. The redesign links word and image tightly and omits the stupid title "Between a rock and a hard place." This was published Nature, where probably half the readers have a PhD in some kind of science. How much does the IQ of the average Nature reader exceed the IQ of the average sub-editor writing such a caption?

-- Edward Tufte

-- Edward Tufte

-- Edward Tufte

New Hampshire claims the title for the most anthropromorphic glacial erratics. The Old Man of the Mountain (from the back of the NH state quarter); the Old Woman, just below him in the Notch; the Lion's Head; the Elephant Head; Martha Washington; the Eagle; the Imp Face; the Sphinx; the Old Man of the Valley; the list goes on. Of course, if you're looking for shapes in stones, you'll find them.

curt

-- Curt LaFond (email)

It's worth thinking of the Chinese tradition of "scholars' stones" in this context--found rocks (and sometimes tree roots and other media) chosen for their curious and captivating shapes and effects of pattern and variation. I thought of them, too, while reading the chapter in Beautiful Evidence on pedestals and sculpture, for scholars' rocks typically are displayed on carefully wrought wooden stands designed to fit and complement their contours--an approach to the pedestal that offers effects different from, but not necessarily antipathetic to, "depedestalization." Pedestals that--like the right display of evidence?--reveal and evoke rather than confuse and obscure.

-- Matthew Battles (email)