Laugh At Death: Kris Martin on Mortality, Silent Bells and the Skeleton He Buried in an Art Museum's Front Lawn

As spring again sputters into being and we witness another revolution of the life/death/life cycle, a recently installed artwork in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden stands as a marker of this type of transition. In tandem with the hourly chiming of bells at the Basilica of St. Mary across the street, Kris Martin's lone, bronze bell -- at the center of his sculpture For Whom... (2012) -- swings soundlessly, a wordless meditation on time's passage. Taking its name from John Donne's famous poem of ...