Tread Softly, 2001

by Pamela Lofts

Public Art / Araluen Art CollectionArrernte Country, 1988 Carbon copy, 2008 Comet, 1995 Grand Circle Yeperenye Sculpture I’ve Seen The Moon, 1995 Mt Gillen, 2008 The Language of Stockmen, 2019 The Split, 1984 Tread Softly, 2001 What are we doing here? – Malapropos, 2016

In the Sculpture Garden of the Araluen Arts Centre is the 2001 sculpture work

“Tread Softly” by artist Pamela Lofts

This work is an arrangement of eight sandstone rocks, each with a word engraved on them. The words and arrangement of them is based on the last line of a poem “The Cloths of Heaven” by WB Yeats…

The significance of the sculpture is commented on by Jan Martin from the article Thinking about Dreaming by Kieran Finnane in July 2019, for the Alice Springs News.

The significance to me of this sculpture is in the year of its creation 2001, the year of welcoming the stolen generations back home to where they truly belong, its location in the courtyard with the very old sacred corkwood tree, and in its message of reconciliation, an appreciation and recognition of the importance of dreams in both English language and the Indigenous languages of the stolen generations … sigh!

Source: Jan Martin²

“Pamela Lofts
1949 – 2012
Tread softly 2001
TREAD … softly … because … YOU … tread … on … my[YOUR/our] … dreams ”
(the engravings read from front to back)

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Source: W. B. Yeats 1865–1939

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Public Art / Araluen Art CollectionArrernte Country, 1988 Carbon copy, 2008 Comet, 1995 Grand Circle Yeperenye Sculpture I’ve Seen The Moon, 1995 Mt Gillen, 2008 The Language of Stockmen, 2019 The Split, 1984 Tread Softly, 2001 What are we doing here? – Malapropos, 2016

Araluen Cultural PrecinctPublic Art / Araluen Art Collection Sacred Sites and the Corkwood Tree

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