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[whitneydavissculpture-blog]

Sarah Sze’s Images in Translation

Images in Translation shows the progression of ideas and materials that leads to the projection on the wall. Entering the space, there is a gentle projection of light on the wall the viewer first sees approaching from the stairs, enticing them to enter the installation, where their senses can be properly overwhelmed. There is another projection on the wall, much larger and much higher in contrast, as it is the shadow of a structure propped up on everyday studio materials. That structure is a thicket of wood and images of various sizes and subjects, with motion in addition to light being projected onto it. Behind the video camera, a trail of objects, also everyday studio or home materials, occupies the space like a theatrical staging. These objects lead to a desk, covered in paper and post-its, and with the screen open on a digital display of the same images which are being projected. It is a combination of the sculptural installation and the sculptural object.

Images in Translation exists linearly. This linearity, in turn, exists in reverse-time, as the viewer traces the projection to the object to the projector to the materials to the workspace where the concept germinated. It recalls Plato’s similarly linear “Allegory of the Cave”, which describes a prisoner forced to see the projections of objects, then upon escaping from his shackles, he sees the objects themselves, then he exits the cave and works his way through processing the new world around him until he ultimately arrives at sunlight. This allusion in conjunction with the extreme modernity of the materials brings the concept of time and history into the piece.

This combination of object and installation forces time to exist simultaneously in two ways. The first is in regards to the history of sculpture, as what is generally accepted as the official transition to modern sculpture is the development of the sculptural installation. The second is in regards to the history of this particular sculpture, as Sze immerses her viewers in the construction of the piece from the idea to the projection before you. The ways in which sculpture exists in time is a fantastically interesting idea to me, and it recalls Kader Attia’s own focus on accepting time into sculptural work. Showing so clearly the hand of the artist also forces the viewer to perceive the sculpture as something that was made by someone, and in that way, I see it as being a figurative piece, or even a self-portrait.

“In the age of the image, a painting is a sculpture.” - Sarah Sze

Going back to the idea of Sze’s sculptural work functioning as a self-portrait, Sze’s quote turns the idea back around on her painting work and training. To my interpretation, this quote refers to how everything surrounding a painting - the materials, the workspace, the artist, etc. - exists as a part of the painting itself. Including this history as she does, again, forces the viewer to perceive her work as existing in time, and her paintings thus become sculptural, as the implication of time also forces the implication of space.

[atlaswantsanartdegree]

Storm King Art Center is a sculptor’s paradise, in my opinion. Featuring artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Richard Serra, Sol Lewitt, etc., visitors are truly visiting a place with artwork of monumental value, in regards to the art world as well as price. As much as I loved walking amongst Richard Serra’s Schunnemunk Fork and sitting inside Noguchi’s Momo Taro, the pieces that really stood out to me were Andy Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall and Five Men, Seventeen Days, Fifteen Boulders, One Wall.

For the majority of my day at Storm King, I was wandering the park alone, lost in thought. I discovered Five Men, Seventeen Days, Fifteen Boulders, One Wall relatively early in the day, and it stopped me in my tracks. At first glance, it just appears to be a stacked stone wall at the edge of a clearing, which to be fair, that’s exactly what it is, but something about it spoke to me. Where all of the few pieces that I had seen so far that day were large metal behemoths that brought to mind a scene of construction crews and power tools and loud noise, this wall just sat at the edge of a clearing, unassuming, quiet. It is a long wall, probably near 100 feet in length, and walking beside it all I could think about were those five men tasked with building it, placing stone row by row, with nothing but the sound of their own voices and that of stone on stone. It mimicked the feeling of the quiet clearing and the small wooded area beyond it. It created the feeling that it had been there forever, like an old ruin, though it has not even been a decade since its construction.

Beyond this clearing, through the woods and quite a ways away lies Storm King Wall, a similar structure of stacked stones winding its way in between trees, down a shallow slope, into a pond, and out its other end. This piece was a bit more hidden, winding through the woods as it was, and it traps you once you cross through its opening and begin walking towards the water. As I followed its path I wondered what would happen once the trees grow too big for the confines of the bending form of the wall. Will the trees be removed? Or will nature be allowed to take its course? Some already grow dangerously close to the heavy stones. I continued down the slope until I reached the pond, and I watched where the wall continued past the shore and sank below the water. I felt I could stay there for hours watching the water lap against the shore, fallen leaves coating the surface. Where the previous wall had felt like a ruin, this one felt ancient beyond what I could put into words, despite being only 12 years older than its counterpart. Something about the stillness of the stones and the trees.

Though these two pieces were constructed more than a decade apart, they are remarkably similar in construction as well as composition. The layered stone, the winding path, the location, etc. The only major differences were the large boulders in place of trees in the former, and the more intense curves and larger size in the latter. Regardless, they felt like a continuation of each other. They felt more permanent than some of the other pieces. Where the large metal sculptures could be taken down, packed up, and shipped somewhere else, these would remain forever. It might erode away eventually, stone by stone, but since they feel as if they’ve been here forever already, they might as well stay for an eternity.

[atlaswantsanartdegree]

The Noguchi museum stole my heart as soon as I walked in the doors. I wish I could have stayed there for longer. She sheer amount of work in this museum requires much more viewing time than what I gave them. The outdoor garden alone is a place I could stay for hours without realizing. Noguchi worked to recreate the serenity of a Japanese garden, and though I’ve never been to one myself, I would like to think that he was successful in his attempt. The tall ivy covered walls block out the existence of the city beyond, isolating this small area of peace. A pathway weaves throughout the garden, surrounded by areas of small broken stones in which a handful of his sculptures reside, in between the scattered trees and other vegetation. These sculptures dance on the boundaries of rough and smooth, natural and man-made. A column that is structured similarly to Brancusi’s endless column lies off to the side, and the viewer would think that it was constructed during the days that Noguchi worked under Brancusi, but it was made much later in Noguchi’s life, as a way to remember his old mentor.

Past the garden, just inside, is a wide array of Noguchi’s works. The space is wide and open, looking more like a modern gallery than any museum. It creates a more open atmosphere, visitors leaning in close to the works as though to interact with them, and with some pieces being encouraged to do so. Some of his stone slab sculptures have been replicated in wood, and visitors are encouraged to take them apart and put them back together again, in order to help them understand the process of creation and the coordinated effort that went into their construction. Smooth, twisting stone forms lie beside a sculpture that appears to have been broken into pieces and then placed neatly back together again, with gaps between the jagged cracks. Nearby are pieces from his days in set design. Unique rocking chairs and other assorted props lie on a stage of sorts. Unfortunately, visitors are not allowed to sit on them. There are unrealized designs of outdoor projects like sculptural playgrounds with earthworks. There is a marble slide. A large piece of white fabric that is stretched out to the viewer in such a way that from the correct angle it appears to be flat (consequently, I almost ran into it). The museum seems to never end. Each turned corner reveals more and more breathtaking works of art. Walking to the exit is difficult, because you just want to stay for five more minutes, do more than just look at the works, take it all in. Eventually, you just have to hope that you’ll come back soon.

[atlaswantsanartdegree]

Sarah Sze’s work seems to completely transform a space. Her sculptures and paintings at first glance appear as an amalgamation of random pieces scattered across a canvas or through a constructed frame, but each scrap of paper and splatter of paint and projected light is carefully placed to give off this illusion of chaos. Walking into the dark gallery is an experience that is difficult to put into words. Through the opening is a series of flashing and spinning lights and projections emanating from a sculptural construction that physically only takes up about a quarter to about half of the room, but in its entirety encompasses the entire room, with its complex structure of what appears to be thin pieces of wood and bamboo layered and cross hatched into a structure that reaches the ceiling, and spinning projections that tie the space together. The viewer becomes a part of the piece simply by being there, as the light projections will inevitably cast the viewers’ shadows onto the walls and ceiling along with the images of birds flying, foxes running, glowing stars, etc. It is a piece that is easy to get lost in, and always something more to see.

Past this is a narrow hallway that leads into what appears to be a workroom, but this room in itself is also a work of art. There are tools and supplies littering the floor, post its and calendars and notes stuck to the walls, silk screens of paint splatters and hanging string lean against each other in front of a mirror. There are no projections here, and yet the visual of tiny little scraps of paper illuminated by projected images is mimicked in the few paintings that cover the walls. These paintings are also collages, with sticky notes and scrap paper and paint testers coating the surface surrounding and integrating with the illusion of an explosion of forms emanating from the center of the canvas. It seems that the more you look, the more you see. Small details that tell a story of a long process in the making, hand-written notes and pencil outlines on the surface, blending the line between finished and incomplete.

Upstairs is another dark room filled with a sculptural nest, for lack of a better word, like the first one, only much smaller in scale. The room is narrow and long, with a computer desk beside the sculpture showing videos and images unhindered by the quality of light and surface of the small papers that act as screens. It’s more personal, and not as all-encompassing. Further on, in a more well lit area, there is a room with brick walls and old dirty skylights above. On the floor is a splattered arc of paint, acting almost as a barrier from the rest of the small room. On the wall is a painting much like the one in Sze’s workspace, except slightly larger and not as complex, in terms of the absence of collage on the surface, instead focusing on the explosion of forms in mostly paint, this explosion echoed in the paint splattered on the floor.

Sze’s artwork is beautiful and complex and makes you want to take a step closer to see every detail that you can. It can be personal, and it can be distant, but regardless it makes you want to stand and watch. Her works almost seem to play with the concept of time in this sense. With the first sculptural piece, there were dozens of projectors displaying their own images and videos, and in order to see them all the viewer just has to stand by and wait and watch while time passes by unbeknownst to them.

[whitneydavissculpture-blog]

The Apotheosis of the Toiler

Adelaide Alsop Robineau was born in 1865, moving to Syracuse, New York at the age of thirty-five. She began her career as a China painter, as within the industry at the time, women were allowed to decorate the ceramic form but were not permitted to throw the form itself. China painting was also a popular “women’s hobby” at the time. Robineau found this to be an entry point into the world of ceramics, studying painting under William Merritt Chase and then ceramics under Charles Binns at Alfred University. She, with the assistance of her husband Samuel, established an artist’s studio and the first American magazine to focus on ceramic arts and design, Keramic Studio. 

Known today as the “Mona Lisa of the ceramics world”, Adelaide Alsop Robineau’s magnum opus is colloquially named The Scarab Vase (1910) for its scarab beetle motif adorning the surface. 

Ancient Egyptians regarded the scarab beetle as holy, and it was used as a symbol of day and night, life and death, and immortality. The beetle is also known as a “dung beetle” for its habit of rolling a ball of dung to the entrance of its home each night and rolling it away when it emerges in the morning. Robineau’s reference was in part to reference the daily cycle of a laborer and in part to evoke the phenomenon of Egyptomania, the European interest in Egyptian culture following Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign of the early 1800s. 

The vase itself is porcelain, standing at just over sixteen inches tall. Robineau is rumored to have spent nearly one thousand hours bringing it to full realization. She began by throwing the porcelain clay body and allowing the form to reach the bone dry stage, when she then followed by using a surgical scalpel to carve into the form (a tactic that is extremely precarious and never recommended for ceramicists). Because of the pressure this put on the dry clay, Robineau could only treat the surface of anywhere from the size of a dime to a nickel in the course of a day. This process became so intense that if one holds up the case to a light, there are portions carved so far away that the light will shine through the clay body. 

Robineau’s labor gives credence to the piece’s actual title: The Apotheosis of the Toiler, which refers to the unacknowledged labor and unacknowledged talent of craftspeople. With this work, she felt a connection between the public treatment of craft and the public treatment of women; both were similarly dismissed by the art world and ignored by everyone else. Robineau, as the Toiler, was trying to elevate the status of both not past what they were considered to be below, but to equal consideration. She, as a woman and a craftsperson, wanted to lay claim to her right to be called an artist.

[whitneydavissculpture-blog]

The garden at the Noguchi Museum is one of maybe three truly peaceful places in New York City. Yes, there are parks all around it, but even those are so flooded with activity (as they’re meant to be) that it doesn’t keep the natural elements of a park as vessels for meditation. Within context of a museum space and the reverence we’ve been taught to carry in it, however, the space that was created for perception and contemplation of art bleeds out into the shielded excursion into the outside world.

Going into the Noguchi garden, the viewer has no illusion that someone changed these rocks. Someone got them from somewhere else, altered them, and moved them here, and that someone’s name is on their ticket. Not only that, but that someone is constantly reminding them of what these sculptures once were. As one makes the decision to evade the smooth path of the sidewalk in order to appreciate the works to the best of their ability, one has to feel the stones under their feet, to hear them clink together in one of the quietest places in the city, and to know the materiality of what it is they are seeing. 

This transition from city to nature is exceedingly easier due to Noguchi’s materiality. Each of his stoneworks appears simultaneously as if it was placed and as if it had been there for all of its, so-to-speak, life. They are all unified by a surface that in some places looks as though it could have been untouched were it to be in this particular setting, with an evident discrepancy somewhere along the form that, in theory, could have been achieved by a totally different kind of nature.

Basin and Range (1984) is the most extreme example of this. The flat, smooth surface on top could have easily occurred by a strong current, sitting at the bottom of a river. So while seeing this piece in context of a dry garden the smoothness feels like an intrusion into the stone, conceiving it in a different nature forces a switch in perception, and the rough stone becomes an extrusion. What seems initially like an attempt to control nature gives way to the thought that perhaps the human intervening with nature isn’t a defiance of nature at all - the human attempt to control nature is futile, because that instinct is part of nature. Noguchi, in this line of thought, gives into nature, and allows that, even as he continues to control its product, to control him.

[natalievanoyen-blog]

The Queen of Fluxus

A movement that’s mentality still applies to art today, Fluxus took place in the 1960s and 70s which included an integrative community of artist dabbling in music, design, poetry, and performance, as well as fine arts. These artist were more focused on the experimentation of art performance that emphasized their process rather than focusing on the final product. The element of time plays a big role in the Fluxus period. Many artists would use multiples of the same object and or subject and display them together to illustrate a sequence. For instance, placing a large amount of carrots on the ground and selecting moments to photograph them in order to show their decomposition.

The 1960s, when Fluxus first began developing, was really a time of change around the world, specifically in Europe as well as the United States. It was a time of “social upheaval” partially because of the dissolution in European colonial empires and the demographic changes following World War II. The United States was challenged with conflicts related to racism and the Vietnam War (Bass). Fluxus was a way for artists to try to find solutions to these problems by using philosophical tendencies in their work with the intention to invoke the moral consciousness of the viewers. One thing that all Fluxus artists shared was certainly philosophical awareness.

An artist who is a great example of the Fluxus movement in its’ prime, that is still creating art today with the Fluxus attitude, is Yoko Ono. “Ono was one of the strongest feminist voices to emerge from the art world in the 60s. Her Cut Piece (1964), a first for feminist art performance, invited audience members to take turns cutting off her clothes using a pair of scissors.” (Art Story). One of the things that I admire so much about Yoko is that she had already made a name for herself before the attention of her relationship with John Lennon. Her work also has no limits, from performance, to painting, to music, she has always been a broad artist breaking boundaries in her own art as well as doing so when working with other artists. A lot of her work challenged social constructs, especially societies way of depicting women. I look up to Yoko in my own work in hopes that I too can bring attention to the common discrimination and double standards that are placed on women on a daily basis. Her career has been going on and successfully for more than five decades. That alone is incredibly impressive. Being one of the founders of the Fluxus movement, and continuing part of that attitude makes Yoko a perfect example of what the Fluxus movement was, still is, and what is was meant for. 

Works like Cut Piece,1964 and Bag Piece,1964 by Yoko Ono were groundbreaking at the time and would mostly likely gain a lot of attention today. In the performance Cut Piece, she invited the audience to cut off part of her clothing. However much they wanted and where ever they wanted. This created a commentary on women costanly giving things up in society as well as highlighting sexual assault. The work Bag Piece might be considered even more boundary breaking. The work involved a large black bag which created a space of pure darkness. Ono invited the audience, a couple people a time, to enter the bag and remove their clothing. And whatever they did in the bag was up to them. This completely diminished the power of race, gender, class, and other traditional distinctions (The Art Story) which was her aim. Yoko once said, “I thought art was a verb, rather than a noun,” and I don’t think anyone could have said it better if they tried.

Cited:

Baas, Jacquelynn. Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College The University of Chicago Press, 2011.

“Yoko Ono Overview and Analysis.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-ono-yoko.htm.

[atlaswantsanartdegree]

The role of public art is very important to a society as a whole. Public art, more specifically public sculpture, can serve multiple purposes that are beneficial to a community. It can memorialize, educate, be interactive, and unite the people of a community. Going along with this sense of community, I believe that public art should be made by and/or for the people of said community. This means communication of desires from both the artists and the patrons, but especially the patrons. Art that is not desired by the public may not be loved and appreciated by the public. Some may outright hate it. An artwork should be as much a part of the community as its people. An art piece created backed by the will of the public will give that public a voice, to tell the world around them who they are, their history, what is important to them.

A few years ago, I was a part of a project in a town not too far from where I live called Eureka, Illinois. It is a small town with a small community, but it is centered around a (rather large) lake. This lake is where the community gathers for events, holidays, relaxation, etc. It is a large part of the identity of this town. The project that I was able to participate in was the creation of a 21 foot long ceramic tile mosaic of Eureka lake that is positioned near one of the main entrances to the lake. The image is from an aerial view, showing the homes that bordered its shores, the canopies of trees, and the farms that lay farther outside the city but were still a large part of the community. From beginning to end, it took about two years and at least 1000 tiles to complete. Some tiles were pressed with leaves from the trees surrounding the lake and the texture of the asphalt where it was to be placed. It was a piece created by a resident of the town, with the help of other local artists who were part of the community or connected to it in some way. The funds were raised by the community, and commissioned by the town’s rotary club. From beginning to end, this piece was wanted, funded, created, and installed by members of the community for the community. In my opinion, this is the epitome of what public art should be.