Can autumn bleed through sheets of rust?
A dried maple leaf seamlessly merges into a cut steel plate of the exact same shape on a weathered workbench.
What you see
A dried, amber maple leaf lies on a weathered wooden workbench, but its delicate lobes seamlessly transition into solid, cold-rolled steel. The metallic portion matches the intricate serrations and silhouette of the foliage, surrounded by scattered iron shavings and dust within a dimly lit industrial workshop.
The composition fuses a fragile maple leaf with an engineered steel plate through their identical lobed contours. One half preserves the paper-thin veins and brittle texture of decaying autumn foliage, while the other exhibits the rigid density and sharp edges of machined metal.
This hybrid contrasts the ephemeral fragility of nature with the unyielding permanence of heavy industry. By forcing natural decay to share form with cold, manufactured alloy, the object turns a fleeting seasonal remnant into something dense, heavy, and immovable.
