By Joanne Degnan, Staff Writer
ROBBINSVILLE — Is it a bird? Is it a flame?
That’s what township residents were asking one another last week after Sharbell installed a 22-foot-tall steel sculpture by artist Littleton Alston on a Town Center parcel at the corner of Route 33 and Robbinsville-Edinburg Road.
”I think it looks like a swan,” Pennfield Road resident Carole Wortelmann said Sunday. “I like it.”
Others saw less elegant ornithological possibilities.
”A two-headed goose?” wondered Brian Fahey.
Cathy Schafer, of Cathy Drive, was one of several people in an unscientific sampling of residents who said the sculpture evokes dancing flames or a torch.
Sharon Road resident Debra Bjorling offered a more mythological interpretation that includes both fire and feathers.
”I think of a phoenix; a phoenix rising from the flames,” said Ms. Bjorling, adding that she has admired the sculpture since the first time she saw it years ago near the Hamilton train station where it also was on display for a time.
”I have always liked it, no matter where they put it,” Ms. Bjorling said.
Not everyone is a fan, however. The cement platform in Town Center where the 4,750-pound sculpture was installed April 14 was barely dry before a few anonymous critics began to pan the sculpture on a local online Internet forum. Most of the people who posted comments, however, had a favorable opinion, even if they were puzzled about what it represented.
Mark Cannuli, the director of development for Sharbell, said Friday the sculpture is called “Tree of Life,” and is on loan to Sharbell for two years directly from the artist, a professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. The piece came to Robbinsville by way of the Johnson Atelier in Hamilton where it had been placed in storage after being on display at Grounds for Sculpture and the train station.
Mr. Alston, reached by phone at his studio in Omaha, said Tuesday that he created “Tree of Life” for the 1998 Pier Walk Invitational at the Chicago Navy Pier, one of the world’s largest outdoor sculpture exhibitions.
”I see the ‘Tree of Life’ as a piece about transformation and growth,” Mr. Alston said. “It starts off with a piece of simple geometry, a square, and develops into something more organic, an evolution of movement in space.”
”The Tree of Life” uses two types of steel: mild steel, the ubiquitous metal that has been used to build boats, bridges and cars in the world around us, and stainless steel, the glistening modern metal that represents the future, he said.
The mild steel forms the base and moves upward into branches that are welded, bent and twisted so that they fold out like origami from hard angles into soft flowing curves, Mr. Alston said. Then the stainless steel, which does not rust or corrode, breaks through the center like a moment of wisdom and clarity, he said.
Mystery solved: The sculpture is neither flame nor fowl, at least according to the artist. But modern art speaks differently to different people, so perhaps the sculptor’s interpretation is beside the point.
”Don’t even tell me what it really is because whenever I look at it I’m still going to see a swan,” Ms. Wortelmann said.
Mr. Alston enjoyed hearing the various theories residents are offering about what his sculpture represents.
”You can’t tell people how to interpret it,” Mr. Alston said. “Hopefully, it speaks to people. As an artist, that is my greatest reward.”

