Single Bound

Terry Adkins’s work bridges past and present in astonishing ways. For more than two decades, he has made it his project to examine historically resonant sites, then use salvaged cast-off materials to create elegant, eloquent sculptures and installations that commemorate the particular people and places at their source. Invited to create a series of works in the remains of the imposing Finesilver uniform-manufacturing warehouse in San Antonio, Adkins responded with a meditation on the long-ago, unnamed factory workers and the early Texas blues musicians who made pivotal recordings in that city in the 1920s. Chief among this suite of evocative new works was Single Bound. A metal D-shaped hoop interlaced with lustrous black rooster feathers, the sculpture projects outward, hung perpendicular to the wall, forcefully claiming—yet floating in—space. Whether seen from the side or head-on (casting redemptive wing-shaped shadows when directly lit), its mastery of every dimension is absolute. A tribute to the working life and to blues troubadours whose sexual boasting fueled their music as much as it did their hardscrabble lives on the road, Single Bound asserts the heroism of those who never got their due.