Alexandra Moore
  Windstills
The Earth is sacred. Yet we abuse her. Systematically, as an American culture, our society gives us permission to abuse our Earth. Our own government allows and promotes deforestation, toxic contamination, and general environmental degradation. We as individual citizens must recognize the dire need to rehabilitate the Earth by changing the way we live our lives. This change requires something of every citizen, not just our government. As citizens, we have power over what we consume, and we must exercise our power as consumers to make educated and responsible decisions for our Earth.
We must buy only when necessary, not to fill our pathetic desire for new objects. We must buy items that are reusable or recyclable whenever possible to slow the rapidly overflowing landfills that leave deep toxic scars on our Earth.
Windstills represents the need for environmental sustainability. The pattern of rocks represents a labyrinth, which is an ancient symbol that is walked to gain inner peace. In this case, the labyrinth represents the Earth, and in order to gain environmental peace for our Earth, we must tread lightly on its surface. There are four circles of the labyrinth – the further we walk towards the labyrinths center, the deeper our knowledge, understanding and willingness to commit to providing a sustainable environment for our future generations.
The clay feet represent our society walking on the Earth's labyrinth. On the outer layer, the feet are walking the path, however as the feet approach the center, they are turned outward, symbolizing static movement. The American society has stopped walking the labyrinth at the outer layer because we are far from gaining the deep and spiritual connection to our Earth and we fail to protect it. The windmills emerging from the feet’s ankles symbolize America’s potential as the most powerful country on Earth to “take off and fly” and lead the world in an sustainable environmental movement. Yet the windmills do not move. They are static. We do not exercise our power to protect our Earth from ourselves. Thus making the windmills windstills.