'World-Tree' Graces Grad Center; Its Sculptor Advises: 'Enjoy It!'

Stainless steel and mysterious to the unsophisticated observer, the long-heralded pylon became part of the Graduate Center quadrangle's topography during the vacation.

Richard Lippold, its sculptor, says, "This piece is really a 'world-tree,' its four main branches reaching to the main ponts of the compass, its trunk in the earth, and its extremities still growing, uncluded, in space."

Designed around a "transparent' sphere, to display "inner tensions," it is related to those objects in our modern landscape like antennae, which make quickest communication with all points of the earth," Lippold said.

"The piece would enjoy an annual polishing (with Bon Ami cleanser), probably as a rite at the vernal equinox," he mused, "and it will not resent being inhabited by one or two contemplative beings, Enjoy it!"