Peacock, Give me a Sign

The inception of this peacock was born from a moment of profound, visceral vulnerability in the quietude of our Hudson Valley refuge. Having left the kinetic hum of San Francisco for the mist-shrouded isolation of the Catskills at the onset of the pandemic, we found ourselves suspended in a strange, expansive silence. One May morning in 2021, the weight of our solitude pressed heavily upon Dilek; she sat upon the grass, her spirit weary with the ache of uncertainty, and she cried out the sky above, her voice ringing out across the mountainside as she demanded a sign—a celestial tether to confirm that we had not lost our way in the wilderness. The earth answered the following day with impossible grace. In the very spot where her call had echoed only 24 hours earlier, a peacock appeared, an iridescent anomaly of color and quiet majesty that moved through our yard and lingered upon our porch before taking flight, leaving behind a certainty that bloomed as clearly as the spring.

That single, fleeting visitation became the blueprint for our shared endeavor. When the request to capture that moment in steel was first whispered, I hesitated, until we agreed that the work could only exist if it were a communion of our distinct talents. The sculpture became a marriage of fire and vision: I sought to tame the steel, wielding my torch to carve the raw, industrial strength of the I-beam, while Dilek acted as the soul of the process, sketching the intricate lifeblood of the bird directly onto the metal. Whenever the fire faltered or the form grew rigid, her artist's eye guided the hand, bringing nuance to the cold iron. This peacock stands not merely as a representation of a sign, but as a testament to our first true collaboration—a vessel of love and despair, wrought together in the crucible of our shared life.