Nina Katchadourian

This is a work by Nina Katchadourian. Her work was part of the Time Based Art Festival I attended this weekend in Portland. I love this piece, in which she actually finds spider webs and tries to "mend" them with string. The spiders are generally nonplussed by this, and immediately attempt to rid their webs of her interventions. To me it's about the tension we've been describing between nature and culture, a fraught relationship indeed!

You may see more of her work at her website here: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/

"The Representation of Man"

This piece interests me both for what it symbolizes and for its aesthetic qualities. It is called "The Representation of Man", carved from wood by Rudolf Steiner almost 100 years ago. The prominant figure in this sculpture represents humankind. He is taking part in a constant balancing act in which he must resist the demon (Ahriman) beneath him, who constantly urges him to fall into a total and inescapable despair, while simultaneously resisting the temptations of the figure above him (Lucifer) who means to convince him to live so lightly and freely that all earthly affairs cease to hold any amount of importance to him. I am intrigued by this reminder of the fragility of our states of being on a day to day basis, and at the same time the display of humanity's utter strength of will, and humanity as a bearer of a potential so strong that we hardly realize it within ourselves. On a more technical and physical level I am impressed by the ways in which Steiner manipulated layer upon layer of flat wooden boards, giving the material an incredible amount of fluidity and three dimensionality while still retaining some of its original woodblock-like qualities. This piece is about as tall as a two story house, so I also have a lot of respect for how much time and effort he put into it.

The images I used came from this page:

http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/galleries/Steiner_Sculpture/index.html

3-D printing makes Sculpture class easier?!?!?

anselm kiefer "tannhauser"

this is just one of many, many works by Kiefer, both sculptural and two-dimensional, that i've been devouring over the past week. this one "tannhauser" struck me particularly with respect to the trip we took on thursday, a sort of interface with discarded objects, natural progressions of growth and decay. i am continually fascinated by this idea of human "self-exile" from the natural cycles, and the implications of an exile that seems to result in pain and alienated confusion far more than anything else. alienation. i don't mean to insinuate Kiefer's own intention with the piece, but my own visual read is one of human inconsequentiality in the face of massive, natural processes that exist far beyond the scope of human rationale, an aspect i see as integral to the whole discussion of artificial and natural intersection.

Int./Adv. Sculpture "fieldtrip" to the old/new, functional/dysfuntional, demolished/newly built blue Mountain Mall and nearby Shopko. A local monument to the joys and sorrows of capitalism.

Damien Hirst's Anatomical Man, Hymn

I'm posting a few things in response to today's discussion of possible project materials and topics with regard to the Nature and Artifice project. This work is made of bronze, up-scaled from a small plastic toy model. The artist, Damien Hirst had to agree to donate money to charities specified by the toy company that makes the item, in order to avoid a copyright lawsuit. The second image is by the artist Karen Rudd. In her words,

“My art has focused on tree stumps and, most often, recreating the form from reclaimed corrugated cardboard boxes. I am not only reconstructing the organic form from its original material, but drawing connections between past and present by creating a historical subject in a ubiquitous and contemporary material. These sculptures, like much of my work, is a commentary on consumerism and natural resource use."

Continuing the Journey

This picture is of a piece I made for the last assignment in Beginning Sculpture in the fall of 2009. The tree is made out of single ply plastic sheeting that I melted together with a heat gun. The sculpture is inflated by a fan at its base that is enclosed in a white wooden housing (not visible in the photo). I chose to post about this piece because it very much relates to the topic the Intermediate/Advance Sculpture class is focusing on for our first piece: “Nature and Artifice.” When creating this piece my mind was very much full of thoughts revolving around the natural and the artificial. The tree itself is a very natural form, while the plastic material profoundly relates to a world that is artificial and fabricated. I wanted the meaning of this piece to come purely from the full-bodied experience of the viewer. I wanted to explore the effect such a natural form would have when fully extracted from nature. Would a complete artificial recreation still embody the same meaning as its natural counterpart? Would the associations made with the form in nature remain intact, or would such meaning fall away and create room for a completely new interpretation?

Nature has always been one of my biggest influences, and I may go as far as saying it IS my biggest influence. Trees especially affect me in a unique way. In a sense I feel overpowered by them. Not a forceful overpowering that I try to resist, but one that brings with it a sort of comforting warmth and sense of security. The thing I like most about the tree is the fact that through the slow process of persistent and steady growth, using only water, sunlight, and soil, a tree can reach a magnitude that challenges and even overtakes structures created by humans. To me the tree is a very tangible representation of nature's unyielding power.

Needless to say, I am excited to continue where I left off a year ago, and further explore the relationships between nature and artifice.