Clare makes wings for Henry

Clare makes wings for Henry during the period when he is confined to a wheelchair after losing both feet. The work begins as an attempt to imagine a human figure and becomes a pair of immense, dark paper wings instead: an object that cannot undo his bodily loss, but gives form to the movement and freedom he associates with flight. Made through patient studio labor and revealed to Henry in a candlelit room, the wings turn artistic practice into a private offering between spouses.

Occasion and Design

In October 2006, Clare stands in her studio with drawings and armature wire, clearing the worktable and trying to picture a life-size, three-dimensional piece. She begins with a torso, shaping shoulders, ribcage, and pelvis, but abandons the figure and starts again. The change of direction narrows the work to what she wants to give Henry: the wings alone.

The design is large enough to alter the room around it. Clare measures the span with her arms, makes the second wing as a mirror image of the first, and checks their balance by eye. Hinged together, they hang from the ceiling, eight feet across. At first she considers white, then rejects it in favor of a more troubled palette, choosing red iron oxide and bone black. The materials and color decisions make the wings neither a simple emblem of innocence nor a functional device: they are deliberately dark, decorative, and unusable for actual flight.

Making the Wings

Clare builds the wings through a sequence of hands-on processes. She cooks and beats kozo bark and prepares linen pulp, then forms sheets of paper with a mold and deckle, laying each wet sheet onto felt before pressing the post of paper in a hydraulic press. Repetition becomes part of the work: she dips, drains, and couches sheet after sheet as the studio fills with the physical labor of papermaking.

The next stage gives the armature its surface. Clare drapes damp paper across the wire, where it clings like a membrane, and twists strips into connecting cords and sinews. The result resembles bat wings, with the underlying wire still visible beneath the paper. She dries the leftover sheets, tears them into strips for feathers, and paints them black, gray, and red. The wings are thus not simply assembled objects; their visible form records a chain of decisions, from the abandoned human figure to the paper skin and ragged plumage.

Presentation to Henry

About a week later, Clare arranges for Henry to be brought from the house to the studio with Gomez’s help. The studio is lit by roughly a hundred candles, and a sheet hangs in the middle of the room. Clare appears in a dark dress; she offers Henry coffee before telling him she has made him something. When he asks whether it is feet, she reveals the wings by dropping the sheet.

The wings hang in the candlelight, larger than the darkness around them. Their scale and threatening appearance coexist with what Henry recognizes in them: longing, freedom, and the possibility of rushing through space. The sight recalls his dreams of hovering and running as if gravity could be lifted. He cannot speak at first. Clare then asks him to kiss her, and his response makes the unveiling not only an encounter with the artwork but a renewed moment of intimacy between them.

Meaning and Limits

The wings answer Henry’s loss without pretending to reverse it. They do not restore his feet or promise that he can physically fly; their uselessness is part of their meaning. Clare makes an image of movement for someone whose ability to move has been profoundly changed, while Henry’s response joins the object to remembered dreams of running and release. The gift holds bodily limitation and imaginative freedom together instead of confusing one for the other.

The making also establishes a contrast between practical care and artistic expression. Gomez helps Henry reach the studio, while Clare’s labor offers something different from transportation or treatment: a crafted form in which Henry’s longing can be seen. The final request for a kiss brings the focus back from the monumental wings to the people beside them. Their significance lies not in overcoming Henry’s condition, but in the shared moment the work makes possible.