Skip to main content

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Advanced Search
Philogenic Continuum by Lyndon Fayne Pomeroy
Photo CreditPhoto courtesy of McKay Lodge Fine Arts Conservation Laboratory, Inc.
Philogenic Continuum
Photo CreditPhoto courtesy of McKay Lodge Fine Arts Conservation Laboratory, Inc.

Philogenic Continuum

Artist
Year1966
Classification sculpture
Dimensions9'6" x 43'4"
Credits Commissioned through the Fine Arts in New Federal Buildings Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Location




  • Five abstract panels each depicting an era of time.  The overriding theme of the series is this region.  The five panels give visual fragmentation to the sequence of events. In the center panel the sunburst radiates across the Big Sky over the time sequences.  Below these rays are the textural forms to suggest the organic vegetable growth.  Beneath these forms are the textures to suggest the earth and the water in the earth.  The latter texture began its life as three-penny nails, according to the artist.  



     Panel 1. The reptilian age is the theme of the first panel. There are three basic types of reptiles suggested which span the evolution of this time segment.  They are the water-dwelling reptiles, the plate-backed herbivores, and the flesh-eating reptiles.


     Panel 2. The vast number of types of creatures which existed are represented by the pronghorn, the deer, the elk, the bear and the bison.  These are the mammals which still exist to the present time in a modified ecology.


     Panel 3. The time of the Indian.  The family relationship represented is that which existed prior to their conversion and adaptation to the white man's ways.  Their span of time as nomads on the prairies was not long relative to the previous time segments, but they enjoyed the privilege of freedom which they or we have not known since.


     Panel 4.  The period of the Stockman and the Honyoker, or Homesteader.  The stockman overpopulated the prairie with his livestock.  The sodbuster turned the grass wrong side up, and compartmentalized his own world and that of the stockman.


     Panel 5. Now and Tomorrow.  The figures are isolated into structures to suggest the compartmentalization of our culture.  This has become almost total.  These structures also function as doors to an unlimited future, and the Big Sky above the frames is free: one need only to look, and your see forever.  The figure on the left represents the designer, peddler, administrator.  The central figure suggests the laborer, and the figure on the right suggests the farmer of agriculturalist.  Together, they control the evolving ecology which is our region.