Adam Gilbreath

Selected Works

The Garden at the End of Time

A group project designed and concieved of with Tyler Newman.

Scale, time, memory, and place: these elements are essential to White Sands National Park. How do you feel the scale of a place that seemingly has no end? How do you measure the movement of sand through time when confined to singular moment? These questions relate to the memorializing of the last nuclear bomb. To understand the devastation and lasting sorrow of nuclear bombs, the scale, and impact must be conveyed.

Three towers are placed in white sands. The center tower marking ground zero of a nuclear blast. The two flanking towers are marking safety from the blast. Seperated by 6 miles, the towers are measuring the scale of both white sands and the nuclear bomb.

The healing process after nuclear devastation is internal. The garden at the end of time is a representation of the time it takes to access hope and healing. Perhaps total healing is unobtainable, as it has disappeared before becoming accesssible. Plaster volumes placed within white sands are physical representations of unobtainable healing. The plaster volumes have courtyards within them that hold gardens. These courtyard gardens cannot be accessed until the plaster erodes away through wind and time. This is the Garden at the End of TIme, a hope and healing process that outlasts human existence.