By Loren Madsen
Carved pine and fir with redwood, purpleheart, walnut inlays, and splints, 2010
Carved pine and fir with redwood, purpleheart, walnut inlays, and splints, 2010
A nobori was a samurai battle flag that carried circles and lines as instructions for the troops in the field. This sculpture plays with the ideas of “flag” and “symbol” and emulates the motions of the flags and banners. It was installed on the Karl Stirner Arts Trail on July 25, 2015, and removed in 2020.
Madsen also created Alien, a sculpture permanently located on the arts trail.
Madsen started his artistic career in the early 1970s. He explains his artistic process as “vast installations which slowly turned into reasonably discreet sculptures. Simultaneously my urge to [depict] history and some kind [of] accurate representation of the world and how I fit into it (my original college major was political science) began to assert itself.”