Broken but standing, the sculpture from Fractured Series by Paul Sisko stands in front of Lewis Lab like a lone wolf. It has been standing there through rain and wind and endless winters. The same can be said about all the other sculptures too. All of the other sculptures have stood united and braved the constant push and pull of nature. What is special about this particular sculpture is that it has achieved this feat with missing pieces, an absent limb. Like this sculpture, we are all torn, broken but standing. This sculpture is the perfect embodiment of imperfect humans.

This metal piece was whole once. It started out very elongated and faultless like us all. Then something changed. Something so major happened that it lost a part of itself. A big and cruel bully named Life hit it so hard that a chunk from its top was torn off and fell to the ground nearby. When questioned, Life said that he was experimenting the karate chop he had seen in the latest action blockbuster. Unfortunately, Life glued the piece on the ground. The sculpture can’t put its missing piece back and nobody else has bothered to help it. Who would want to stand up to a bully? The piece will sadly have to lie there till eternity. Life for this sculpture appears to be unforgiving like life is for us all. Life struck again as it always does, but this time it hit harder. The sculpture valiantly withstood the brute force and managed to keep standing. However, this time a large hunk of it was ripped apart. It remains barely attached to the body. One more push could separate them, and they would be isolated entities. That pet you loved, the girl you wanted to marry, your grandma that loved you till the moon and back, your son who is living halfway around the world to fulfill his dream – all of our missing pieces. The sculpture is bright red, reflective, and smooth both at the front and back, but upon closer inspection; it can be seen that the edges are just plain colorless aluminum. It is trying to compensate for its missing pieces by being aesthetically appealing. Unfortunately, it is failing miserably. Regardless of the sculpture’s efforts to mask its weaknesses; it will never be able to make us unsee the gaping hole in the middle of its body.

If one punch could leave a big dent on it and a strong wind could uproot it, what does that say about the sculpture? Perhaps, that is what it wants; someone to sweep it off its feet.  It was evident after knocking on the sculpture that the inside of the sculpture was hollow. It looks sturdy from the outside but that was never the case. Maybe that’s why it’s so shiny. If it could imitate gold, no one would dare touch it, its structural integrity would be intact and there would be no other option than to sweep it off its feet. If that is the case, it is failing miserably. We are all failing miserably in concealing our weaknesses.

The sculpture stands on a patch of circular grass. Maybe the people who put it there did not want to deal with welding back the missing piece and just planted some grass there hoping that vegetation would regenerate the missing piece. We keep trying to make a fish climb a tree, don’t we? None of us know how the world works. This sculpture is not directly near the Memorial walk like other sculpture, so it is secluded from the rest of the sculptures and is alone. That is understandable because who would want to swim close to a sinking ship? You would only get sucked in and sink yourself.

If given the task to grade humans, we would all get an A for effort – just for trying so hard to hide our shortcomings. Unfortunately, the real person will always trickle through the cracks no matter how good people are at making their appearance shiny.

This sculpture stands in front of Lewis Lab, which is the building for all things Physics. It is possible that its creators were hoping some science guy would come to it one day and analyze its fractures and its pieces and would try to put them back together like we all want for ourselves too. Many have probably tried and failed. These cracks are the integral part of our perfection. I tried lifting the missing piece on the ground in hopes of putting it back on its original place. I am not surprised I failed too. Seeing this sculpture, everyone else sees embodiment of imperfection, but I see me. I see you. I see faulty humans. I am stupid, I am weak, I am human. I tried. I give myself an A for effort.

Anmol Shrestha