Lydia Jenkins Musco’s ‘Broken Boxes’ at Roswell’s Anderson Museum
Massachusetts‑based sculptor Lydia Jenkins Musco, now finishing the Roswell Artist‑in‑Residence program, turns the humble tree log into a visual metaphor for both nature and record‑keeping. In her solo show Broken Boxes at the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, a simple hook‑like form recurs in glass, terracotta and cast metal, echoing the “chip log” once used to measure nautical distance.\n\nMusco treats the shape as a unit of measurement, reproducing it with disciplined precision and a dry wit that recalls Marcel Duchamp’s playful standard‑stoppage experiments. By casting the same silhouette in varied materials, breaking, deforming and reassembling it, she creates a personal lexicon of “standard” building blocks.\n\nThe two towering pieces from her Unconformity series stand over six feet tall, their conjoined vertical forms suggesting both skyscrapers and aging couples leaning on one another. The asymmetrical pairing evokes Frank Gehry’s “Ginger and Fred” tower in Prague, but here the dialogue is quieter, a gesture of mutual support rather than a dance.\n\nBeyond formalist curiosity, Musco’s sculptures speak to human frailty: exposed seams, cracked surfaces and re‑joined fragments mirror the way lives bear visible scars yet continue to lean on each other. The work balances humor and melancholy, inviting viewers to feel the weight of history and the tenderness of shared endurance.