Wheel of Fortune

“I wanted to look at the clash between devastation and beauty, and the unexpected consequences of disaster.”

Kentucky-born artist, Anne Peabody

A site-specific installation by Anne Peabody commissioned for 21c, Wheel of Fortune is a physical record inspired from the artist’s memory of the tornado that leveled much of Louisville on April 3rd, 1974. The work consists of broken eggs, flashlights, dolls’ heads, turkey basters, and batteries made of wood as well as found objects made of glass swirl together that form a massive funnel cloud in 21c Louisville’s Atrium Gallery. Peabody made the carved wooden objects in Wheel of Fortune by hand and has invited other carvers and wood turners (some of whom lived through the tornado themselves), to contribute pieces for the installation. The found objects of glass also include items given to the artist by friends and neighbors.

Says Peabody: “I started from my own childhood memories of the 1974 tornado, which left my house untouched but my neighborhood devastated and my yard filled with other people’s possessions. While Wheel of Fortune grew out of events in own my life, I want to speak to the experience of anyone touched by the bizarre dislocations of calamity.”