Comments on Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996

"I didn’t set out to make a work about Booker T. Washington. The work was really about using a sapling...and making a work that had a kind of forced perspective, which made it appear to recede into space faster than it does. It’s an idea I’ve been fascinated with for a long time. It requires a certain length- it’s a piece that couldn’t have been done small. As it was, it was thirty-six feet long. It’s the ideas of diminution in space and the manipulation of that perception that interest me."

- Martin Puryear

Heres a photo that puts the size in perspective