Nature’s endurance forms the subtext of New York sculptor James Croak’s oddly compelling objects east into a mixture of dirt and binder. These brown, crumbly-textured forms are at once poignant and macabre. They recall George Segal’s cast plaster tableaus, but their perfunctory nature suggests that only truncated images are possible in a fragmented culture.
"Shovel," a cast dirt shovel held by a disembodied cast dirt hand, suggests that the human attempt to master nature – to turn over the earth and gain sustenance – can only go so far, since the body eventually turns to dust.