#sculpture56

[sculpture56-blog]

Noah Loesberg

photo credit: Jennie Nichols for Romanov Grave

s56: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

NL: I like altering material, with an emphasis on the physicality of the process.  Not necessarily athletically, but certainly manually, and on a certain scale.  I think of my 2 dimensional works in the same way, material processes are applied to objects.

s56: What does sculpture do that painting  cannot do? How does sculpture relate to other art forms? Think: video, social sculpture, performance.

NL: In comparison to painting, sculpture (since the mid 20th century) both benefits and suffers from its relative lack of access to narrative.  Painting can easily claim its ‘window’ status, to represent reality, and has to work a little harder to deny it and be an object.  In contrast, sculpture is always an object first.

s56: Talk to me about verticality in sculpture or the lack thereof.

I’m interested in gravity, so verticality is tangentially related.  And a total lack of verticality would result in a flat plane.  But I don’t prioritize it, or really think about it very much.  Usually in  my work there are conceptual and process parameters in place before the final form is realized, so whether or not something ends up vertical is of less interest to me.

[sculpture56-blog]

José-Ricardo Presman

s56: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

JP: I work in mixed media, so I don't necessarily use sculpture as a medium unless I'm depicting a balance between the gravity defying forces that "draw up" from the periphery of the work, and the pulling down of the forces of gravity. Most sculpture is actually made in the form of "construction" from a central point to the physical edges of the work, point-by-point, with an emphasis on its weight.

s56: Please describe your process of working with three dimensions. Where do you start?

JP: The classical sculptors are well known for starting with a piece of material -- stone, wood, etc. -- and imagining a form "inhabiting" the material. They then carried out their work, releasing the form from the raw material. This manner of working for me must be the starting point -- the raw material gives way to the internal imagined form. thereby freeing it from "imprisonment".

s56: In what ways does sculpture invoke the body?

JP: Sculpture involves the degree of lightness or heaviness of the body -- it doesn't have to be the human body. If the work is more detailed, it could describe the range of the body and its three parts of head, circulatory system and limbs; or in nature, sky, water and earth. The skill of the artist adds both internal and external warmth, giving it life.

[sculpture56-blog]

Sam Jones

s56: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

SJ: Two dimensions invite a suspension of disbelief that sculpture does not- sculpture is honest in its theatre- it participates with the body. It provokes, and it fails in the world, a reminder of our mortality, our facade, our fragile state of being.

s56: Please describe your process of working with three-dimensions. Where do you start?

SJ: My process is all about subverting my own notions and preconceptions. I use material to decreate myself. What comes from this is the work. It first unmakes, and then makes me.

s56: In what ways does sculpture envoke the body?

SJ: Again, I think of this concept of 'decreation' as defined by Simone Weil - a renunciation of free will as a form of acceptance of everything that is independent of one's particular desires and “to make something created pass into the uncreated”. In this way, the work becomes a catalyst of the ecstatic; the angel “piercing through to my entrails”, as St. Teresa of Avila would say. The work then functions as does the body; a permeable vessel and conduit between the realms of self and other.

In many ways, my forms are artifacts of becoming; unfinished, permeated, unraveling, melting and disintegrating as they are suspended in a moment of passage from one dimension to the next. The eye is unsettled, and the viewer’s attention is diverted from subject and object - evoking Weil’s idea that attention alone, “in which the ‘I’ disappears” is what is required.

These invitations to seek and surrender to something beyond the self become catalysts for new growth, allowing artist and viewer to undermine established modes of creation and perception in favor of more mindful, careful ways of being.

s56: Talk to me about verticality in sculpture or the lack thereof.

SJ: I find that I am often trying to levitate material in various ways- I think this comes from a phenomenological need to transcend.

[sculpture56-blog]

Tom Butter

s56: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

TB: When I started making sculpture in grad school, what I liked was that it forced me to slow down: the processes involved imposed a “thinking time” on the way to making a piece. Before this, I had been making prints, which has its own demands of extended process, as compared to say, drawing. 

Painting at the time just happened too fast for me. The very thing I like now – that you can make it as fast as you can think of it – was a problem when I was younger. So it is gratifying to be able to “slow down” on my own enough to work on paintings now. It has always seemed to me that sculpture is many things, painting is one thing. Both are incredibly complex.

s56: What does sculpture do that painting  cannot do? How does sculpture relate to other art forms? Think: video, social sculpture, performance.

I like very much what the philosopher Susanne Langer has to say about the different disciplines in the arts, and the inherent boundaries and qualities of those disciplines. She is the clearest writer about these I have read. She uses the phrase “virtual space” way before the idea of being “virtual” was in common usage. Her definitions of sculpture as being “the image of a kinetic volume in sensory space” and painting as being a “virtual scene” are really definitive. Her book Feeling and Form (1953, Scribner's Sons) delves deeply into the way the visual arts achieve meaning for us.

But I have always liked the rules as they are: painting is flat, it demands thinking about, and using, surface and space in tandem. In fact that dynamic is a dialectic which produces a kind of thinking about the world the philosopher Jay Bernstein (philosophy professor at the New School) calls “eventful.” As Langer says, we experience painting as a “scene”- “a space opposite the eye, and related directly and essentially to the eye.”

Sculpture can create a virtual space related to the body – by being both a semblance of the figure and by having a body relation. Or being primarily one and not so much the other, or being both.  A physical volume creating a three-dimensional virtual space right in front of us makes for incredible dynamics, and very particular sensations!

Video, “social sculpture”, and performance all exist at some point in real time, where time passing participates in how their meaning grows and adheres. I do think it is possible to blur, and merge, these areas or disciplines and produce great things!

s56: Please describe your process of working with three-dimensions. Where do you start?

TB: I start with drawing, which I find gives me the most direct connection between thinking and making. Then working is a process negotiation between space, materials, ideas, and feeling.

s56: In what ways does sculpture invoke the body?

TB: I mentioned above that I think sculpture can create a virtual space related to the body – by being both a semblance of the figure and by having a body relation. This dynamic has to do with the figure or body functioning as a discrete entity. I think sculptural installations propose a way to have the body move around and through sculpture. With this, the viewer experiences form as a kind of theater or movie set. Here, sculpture is an environment, and the viewer becomes an actor, voyeur, or witness in another world.

s56: Talk to me about verticality in sculpture or the lack thereof.

TB: My sculpture “Host” at Studio 10 is vertical so it can signal its own identity as being part of nature, by “standing” up and supporting itself, by having that kind of presence. Also as a machine it tries to hold the space as the foam line unwinds from the ceiling to the floor. The verticality allows gravity and the foam line to interact using almost the total height of the gallery. “Rope Trick”, a work I am showing in the other exhibition space, is primarily horizontal, so that the length of rope involved can seem to be moving like a snake. 

I saw three wonderful fabric figure sculptures by Louise Bourgeois at the MET Breuer. They had incredible presence as they exist, which in this case is lying down. Her materials and figurative forms always evoke very unsettling and disorienting thought and feeling.

[sculpture56-blog]

David & Schweitzer, part 2: Kelin Perry, Helen O’Leary, Rosa Valado, and Kurt Steger

Kelin Perry

s56: What does sculpture do that painting  cannot do? How does sculpture relate to other art forms? Think: video, social sculpture, performance.

KP: My goal is to breathe life into my work, to give it a sense of being alive. I find that I am able  to achieve this in 3 dimensions in a way I cannot 2 dimensionally. It’s just me and the piece I’m working on. That dance is very intimate and solitary in its’ creation. The life I work to evoke ultimately does become a social sculpture in the sense that in finding the beauty and honoring the forgotten in the material world, I am also reflecting the humanity and spirit of the unseen and discarded in the our society as well as questioning our concepts of beauty.

s56: Please describe your process of working with three-dimensions. Where do you start?

KP: I am an architect and have always been driven to make things and 3 dimensional thinking comes most naturally to me. Most of the material in my work is found on the side of the road or around neglected urban buildings and railroad tracks. Sometimes, I find a piece that helps inform an idea of what the sculpture might be.  But more often I have some concept of a form and from the many boxes of materials I have gathered over the past several years, I find material that has a dialogue with the form that is taking shape.  They found materials and the concept of the form I am making find a dialogue with each other from that point and inform the process and outcome as I move forward.

s56: In what ways does sculpture invoke the body?

KP: In my work, the pieces I make do not invoke the human sbody so much, but I do want my pieces to evoke the sense of a heartbeat or life.  Every piece of material I find is already imbued with its’ own unique spirit that is palpable to me.  The task for me is to maintain that integrity of the material by finding a way to show it in its’ highest beauty.  This means letting the material speak for itself with as little manipulation as possible.

Helen O’Leary

s56: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

HO: I don't see myself as a sculpture, I see myself as a painter, a very fat painter. I might delusional, but I see painting in space, I even consider my house a painting.

s56: What does sculpture do that painting  cannot do? How does sculpture relate to other art forms? Think: video, social sculpture, performance.

HO: I think expanded painting can include all of these things, it's material meets idea, brain and heart.

s56: Please describe your process of working with three-dimensions. Where do you start?

HO: I start by unravelling something, usually it starts as a minor modification but can go way out of hand. I edit, and edit, it's much like the house I grew up in, it started modest, archaic but grew into a clump of barnacles to accommodate tourists.

s56: In what ways does sculpture invoke the body?

HO: I see the body in everything, it stands, it has bulges, bumps, it takes hits, and keeps going.

s56: Talk to me about verticality in sculpture or the lack thereof.

HO: I Scrutinize each piece from the side to see how it tilts, how it defies gravity, and how it has a humanity to it. If it is too rigid, I dismantle it and start all over again.

Rosa Valado

s56: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

RV: I think of my 3-D work as part of an environment that might have started with a painting - an idea I wanted to explore and then needed to grow out into this physical reality.  My main concern in this area is SPACE ... how the viewer interacts with my ENVIRONMENT.

Activating a space with an idea, a feeling, a metaphor compels me.  Space invites a certain interaction that is physical, intellectual, and emotional.

s56: What does sculpture do that painting  cannot do? How does sculpture relate to other art forms? Think: video, social sculpture, performance.

RV: When I think of large sculptural works, I usually consider the space they are in - and the context. And almost always consider the architecture they are housed in. When considering my own work and installations, the architectural enclosures are often considered first. I think of architecture as an enclosure, a space where all mediums can exist.

I can see all art forms existing together as they all belong to the same source; they are aspects of the language of creativity, and creative expression. To consider them by themselves is possible but feel a bit isolating to me.  This is valid of course, and has its place.

s56: Please describe your process of working with three-dimensions. Where do you start?

RV: When I started working on multi-media installations I was coming out of painting.  The ideas I was working with in painting pushed me into architecture and 3-d work. I never said I'm going to make a sculpture - I loved all forms and formats.  Painting remains central to my work but does always have the opportunity to be included in shows.

Scale is very important to me, large, very large, to very small - all have their place and impact the viewer differently.

s56: In what ways does sculpture invoke the body?

RV: There is almost total physicality when dealing with 3-D work.  In making the work the body is engaged.   The physicality of the materials, body, and gravity are all part of the work. I've enjoyed how this combination has pushed me to develop my engineering skills.

s56: Talk to me about verticality in sculpture or the lack thereof.

RV: Verticality is something present in nature. The eye moving up towards the sky and down, below the ground. Horizontal, usually thought of as landscape, the way we read text etc. Mondrian in his explorations into the existence of life and universe began to make plus signs + at the intersections of vertical and horizontal planes.

Kurt Steger

s56: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

KS: Sculpture exists in the dimension of our reality, which compels us into a relationship with our physicality. I find this important in this age of concentrated focus, in both virtual and mental constructs. Returning to the physical reality allows us to touch into our basic instincts, birthrights, and humanity.

s56: What does sculpture do that painting  cannot do? How does sculpture relate to other art forms? Think: video, social sculpture, performance.

KS: Some of my work is performative, ceremonial, and ritualistic. Sculpture as a medium can incorporate the viewer to participate with the work, and with this interaction it is possible to alter the meaning of the work.

s56: Please describe your process of working with three-dimensions. Where do you start?

KS: My work typically starts with a found object. I contemplate its history and begin to create a story that resonates with my passions and concerns. I let the first move dictate the next and allow the work to evolve organically by creating a dialog with the process.

s56: In what ways does sculpture invoke the body?

KS: The physical work is vitally important in my sculptures. The concentration and relationship of hand and tool, the challenges of skill to create the vision, and the maneuvering of material by either hand or crane or tweezers, I find all this incredibly satisfying.

s56: Talk to me about verticality in sculpture or the lack thereof.

KS: I like to view sculpture by walking around the piece, never taking my eye off from it, and seeing how each angle morphs into the next. I do not want to make work with a “front” and even though usually a bottom or back exists I want this aspect to be resolved as well.