ARTS LOUISVILLE
By Keith Waits
KENTUCKY---At a glance
Philip Campbell’s “100 Burning Boats” might strike one as rather ordinary objects: design lacking detail and craft lacking flourish. But the longer you examine the armada of hand-carved vessels making their way across a simple wooden flow of river, the more the deceptively simple, elemental shapes suggest deeper connotations. As...the burning vessels sail away from us into the unknown, the fire devouring the earthly remains now that they have no place among the living. Those left behind on the river bank continue to seek wisdom and understanding, but the souls of the departed have moved beyond such concerns, or so we imagine. [
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In Hinduism, there is more widespread agreement that the 4,000-year-old practice of open-air burning is the most spiritually appropriate way to release a soul from the body following death.
