Homenaje a Carlos Zook

2007
Steel and found objects
26' X 8'
Collection of the artist

Homenaje is dedicated to a friend who spends his days in a wheelchair. Carlos was my roommate for seven weeks during a Spanish language program in the summer of 2006, and it is possible that I learned as much from Carlos about life as I did about Spanish from the program.

Accessibility is a universal issue, and, literally, through his piece I offer the viewer the opportunity to experience a brief moment of what people in wheelchairs face throughout their lives.

Homenaje is also a celebration of steel and iron, its "doors" and "windows" showcasing some of our industrial past and putting that past on display, if you will. The huge wrench, impossibly separated from the nut that it is designed to turn, suggests past use that is now obsolete. The various turnbuckles (two of which are from different eras of the Erie Canal lock system) are intended to tie together our past and present, to represent both the tension and the strength of those bonds.

Press: "...Peter Barrett's "Homenaje a Carlos Zook," a massive wall of weathered steel panels... is meant to give viewers an experience of the physical barriers faced by the handicapped, is the easily most powerful [piece in the show]. I say that not because of Barrett's laudable humanitarian intent, but because the piece so brilliantly commands and frustrates our attention. A wall with gates and doors, it invites us to pass through, but then creates barriers to our doing so. And the cables, chains, hooks and pulleys that, along with steel plates, make up the fabric of the piece, give it complexity and layers of meaning that can be read on many levels." - Berkshire Eagle