Helm says of this work, "Annealing Net equates my experience as a metalsmith with many spiritual aspects of life. the center stemlike spear symbolizes fire. This has been a symbol for the Jews who followed God and the flame of fire in the desert. The net which surrounds it serves as a cage for the fire which symbolizes man's attempt to control nature or understand God. In order to soften the metal and refine the shape, a metalsmith raises and forms hollowware from a flat disk of silver. The metal must be annealed, or heated over and over again. Likewise, life experiences serve to enhance our inner being, day after day, in a futile attempt to become more refined . . . "

Mircea Eliade sees fire as a hierophany, an appearance of the sacred. Fire has mythic overtones both of destruction and of purification. Fire is associated with the cleansing of sacrifice.

Alison Helm is associate professor of sculpture in the College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University. Her B.F.A. and M. F.A. degrees are from Cleveland Institute of Art and Syracuse University. In 1995 her work was exhibited at FFS Gallery in Soho in New York; at Cline Gallery in Santa Fe, NM; at Steifel Fine Arts in Wheeling WV; and at the Ohio Craft Museum in Columbia, OH.

Biographical information taken from Sculpture Garden III viewbook, 1995