Four Winds, Two Poles

Sharon Doughtie, Four Winds, Two Poles, 2005, Norfolk island pine, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jeffrey Bernstein, M.D. and Judith Chernoff, M.D., 2021.66.8
Copied Sharon Doughtie, Four Winds, Two Poles, 2005, Norfolk island pine, 3 × 9 in. (7.6 × 22.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jeffrey Bernstein, M.D. and Judith Chernoff, M.D., 2021.66.8

Artwork Details

Title
Four Winds, Two Poles
Artist
Date
2005
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
3 × 9 in. (7.6 × 22.9 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Jeffrey Bernstein, M.D. and Judith Chernoff, M.D.
Mediums
Mediums Description
Norfolk island pine
Classifications
Object Number
2021.66.8
Linked Open Data
https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2021.66.8

Artwork Description

This bowl contains Sharon Doughtie’s deeply personal story of survival. In the early 1990s, she and her husband, woodturner Pat Kramer, experienced a volcanic eruption on Hawai’i Island. Doughtie felt lava splattering around her, and she was seriously injured by the impact of a rock. And yet, Doughtie recalled, “it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen—the birth of land.” She turned this bowl to reinforce her connection to the earth. The Celtic knotwork pattern symbolizes the wind circulating around the two poles of Earth.


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