This was originally written as a collaboration with the University of Texas’ Landmarks Program, which hosts and displays works of art around the campus. Commissioned to write a work to accompany one member from a collection of black bronze sculptures on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one piece differentiated itself from the rest. An amalgam of mismatched shapes and inorganic textures cobbled into an incomplete humanoid figure. That sculpture, by Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi, became my inanimate muse.

Paolozzi's Figure conjured in my mind an automaton either incomplete or in ruin: a patchwork creation abandoned by its creators. The poor, hobbled Figure becomes quite a tragic character then, despite its monstrous and unnerving appearance. The Abandoned Colossus audiates an observer's experience of the featured sculpture, augmented in size to match the mighty bronze colossi of Greek myth, lumbering alone towards the observer. The titan elicits first cautious curiosity, then panic as it grows closer, but ultimately, the tragedy of its current existence elicits sympathy. There is no resolution for the forgotten automaton, however, for it continues trundling along its aimless path out of sight of the viewer. In the end, only the creaking footsteps of the colossus that once heralded its arrival can be heard.