Having purchased a welder’s helmet years before at a sidewalk sale, I decided to decorate it with a flowered vine to contrast with its ominously protective feel. I remembered a wadded-up length of rusted barbed wire found on a hike that seemed to fit with the controlling aspect of the helmet. I also had several pieces of randomly shaped plywood left over from a scroll-saw cut for a previous assemblage project. When cut further, sanded, and spray-painted, they looked like wisps of sky, meandering rivers, drifting dunes, and swaths of vegetation. I surrounded the helmet with these forms, floating them off the base with wire supports. I then threaded the barbed wire through the forms and around the helmet to evoke the contradiction between the balance of the natural world and humankind’s need to control and manage it. To make the image more personal, I added a Photoshopped pair of eyes looking out.