Clark Winter American, b. 27/10/1951

A large smooth stone, the shape and the colour of a goose egg, has been balanced on top of a forked stick. The stick has three or four prongs and they cradle it exactly. It is planted in a rusted cylinder, a bucket or a length of pipe, standing in a meadow. Around the base, grasses gone to seed and a scatter of small white daisies. Behind, a pale field and a pale sky, thrown completely out of focus.

Somebody made this. It is a sculpture of the kind that gets made in a field out of whatever the field has, and it has been standing long enough for the grass to grow up through it. The stone is doing nothing at all except being heavy. The stick is doing all the work, and it is a stick.

The picture comes from Winter's Free Air, made around Robert Frank's place at Mabou, and it has been photographed the way you would photograph a person: shallow focus, background discarded, the subject just above centre and lit from behind. The daisies are in flower and the grass has seeded, which puts it in high summer. It is a portrait of an object built to be looked at by nobody in particular, standing in a field, holding up a rock.