Steel Stag- Joseph Warren

Steel Stag

 

Joseph Warren (American)

Sculptures

Found Object Metal Steel with a rust paint to go outdoors

h: 61 x w: 57 in / h: 154.9 x w: 144.8 cm

2011

 

      Joseph Warren, originally from Boston, Massachusetts, was studying for a creative writing degree when he viewed a brilliant found object sculpture of a centaur at a University of Oregon student art gallery. He became so inspired that he switched his studies to welded sculpture at Portland Community College. His many welded animal sculptures are a direct result of his constant search for old steel tools and scrap steel parts found in defunct mining camps and open scrap yards, resale stores, yard and estate sales. His re-use of steel scraps diverts thousands of pounds of the countless tons of steel odds and ends from our waste stream and arranges them to function anew.

     "There are three distinct strands to my work: abstract imagery, digital photo-montage, and 3D assemblage – as with the butterfly series. I like to make the most of digital technology, but I don’t let it dictate the content of my work."--Joseph Warren, 2011.

     Maryhill Museum of Art has presented exhibitions of outdoor sculpture annually since 1996, providing Pacific Northwest sculptors with opportunities to display large scale works in an outdoor setting. In 2011, several sculptors will exhibit works to complement the 10 that comprise the museum’s permanent collection of outdoor sculpture. The sculptures will be installed throughout the museum’s sculpture garden, including a new addition by Devin Laurence Field. The sculpture garden provides a dramatic backdrop for this unique outdoor art experience. 

      This piece fits perfectly into this gallery because it is unique and has the outdoors brought into the piece.

Passage-Cornelia Konrads

Passage

Cornelia Konrads

Passage
2007
Installation on a forest clearing
Branches, steelrope, iron
4.0 x 2.0 x 0.6 m

      Konrads works in the field of artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Rob Mullholland, responding to nature by presenting a way for the viewer, or more commonly, visitor, to reexamine their relationship to place through site-specific installations. Gateways feature heavily within Konrads’ work - Passage, installed in a forest clearing in Germany, provides a literal pathway back into nature. Returning cut-down branches to the cleared area, Konrads provides a direct, graceful and yet playful link between our own interventions into nature and the beauty of the nearby untouched wilderness. Crafted from branches mounted upon an iron frame and suspended with steel rope, the installation forms a roughly organized door frame before drifting upwards and outwards, almost camouflaged by the surrounding woodlands.

      Artist Cornelia Konrads creates sculptures that blend with nature and defies gravity. She works with natural materials in a natural environment. Her work is frequently punctuated by the illusion of weightlessness, where stacked objects like logs, fences, and doorways appear to be suspended in mid-air, reinforcing their temporary nature as if the installation is beginning to dissolve before your very eyes.

     "Calm and motion, dissolution and density, the contrastive play with gravity and overcoming it, with reality and simulation—are the stones really flying up into the sky, or are they not perhaps falling down and settling on the pile? Rising or falling - that is the question."--Carnelia Konrads

  Cornelia Konrads is a German artist who focuses on creating site-specific installations in public spaces, sculpture parks as well as private gardens all around the world. She mainly uses materials available at a specific place and time such as rocks, logs or branches, which reinforces the temporary nature of her works. Her land art frequently consists in making mind-boggling installations that appear to be floating mid-air, but also includes permanent sculptures playing with reality.

     I love seeing this work of art because it is truly defying gravity and reality. It fits in well in this gallery because it makes you stop and shake your head on what it truly real or not. 

Urban Nature-Naoka Ito

Urban Nature

 Ubiquitous
2009
Glass jar, tree
35 x 70 x 50 inches
88.9 x 177.8 x 127 cm

    Naoko Ito (born 1977, Tokyo, Japan), is an emerging artist living and working in New York City. Ito recently receive her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY. She holds a BFA in Science of Design as well as Curator Certification from the Musashino Art University in Tokyo,
Japan. Urban Nature is her first solo exhibition. Group exhibitions include CRG Gallery (New York, NY), 2010 SOHO20 Gallery Chelsea (New York, NY), Yasashii Yokan Gallery (Tokyo, Japan), Perry Rubenstein Gallery (New York NY), Ise Cultural Foundation (New York, NY), Visual Arts
Gallery, School of Visual Arts (New York, NY), X Initiative (New York, NY), ZieherSmith Gallery (New York, NY) Ozone Gallery (Tokyo, Japan), DIC Color Square (Tokyo, Japan), White Box/The Annex (New York, NY). Fellowships, Residencies and Grants include the Artists Residency Program at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), Studio Program at Chashama (Brooklyn, NY), Artist Studio Residenc Program at SOHO20 Gallery Chelsea (New York, NY), School of Visual Arts Graduate Department Award and the Alumni Society of School of Visual Arts Scholarship Award.

      New York based artist Naoko Ito has long had the foresight to understand the shift towards the 'Rurban' lifestyle as we meld our love of urban living with the rural idyl. 'Rurban ' is one of the four directions we explore in the Spring Summer 2012 'Harvest' trend report by The Trend Boutique.

Ito's installations titled 'Urban Nature' have been exhibited since 2008, and has now developed into a set of pieces comprised of tree branches and glass jars. Simple in its execution, these installations actually are a perfect reflection of the changing world around us & our shift in sensibilities.

     " I feel like two dimensions is not enough for me to explain about myself or what I’m talking about, what I’m thinking about." –  Naoko Ito

      Ito advocates that our entire lives are in a constant state of decay and renewal, an idea elegantly illustrated through the pieces Ubiquitous, Flora andPlight. In these works, segmented tree branches are preserved in glass jars. Ito’s choice of material originally stems from a desire to replicate the luminosity and fragility of ice, a natural material that shares the quality of preservation with jars. Stacked precariously on the concrete, the works are evidence of an unfaltering hand.

A large gallery wall crawls with knotted wire, laboriously knitted by Ito over six months. Its seemingly fragile quality mimics moss or ivy. Living in New York City, she doesn’t have much exposure to wilderness. Trees are a common site in Raleigh, the City of Oaks. But around her home, Ito must purchase branches from the local flower market in order to create her artworks.

     This piece fits well into this gallery because it has that shock and awe factor and it also is nature related. 

Born, Kiki Smith

Born

Kiki Smith

Born- Deer Birth
2002
Bronze, 39 x 101 x 24 inches
Edition of 3
Photo by Kerry Ryan McFate

Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York
www.pacewildenstein.com

  

     Kiki Smith (American, born Germany, 1954) is among the most significant artists of her generation. Known primarily as a sculptor, she has also devoted herself to printmaking, which she considers an equally vital part of her work. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Kiki Smith: Prints, Books, and Things (2003), showcase the scope of Smith’s printed art and present it thematically, focusing on such topics as anatomy, self-portraiture, nature, and female iconography. This interactive Web site is similarly arranged and fosters a rich understanding of her innovative body of printed art, illustrating over 135 works in more than 50 comparative groupings. In the “Process” section, Smith’s creative thinking is explored through two series of evolutionary printed proofs and through video footage of the artist making prints. 

     This is a sculpture by Kiki Smith called Born. She is known for creating shocking and provocative art, and this sculpture demonstrates the reasons for this reputation. In this work, a small deer gives birth to a mature, life-sized woman. I find the idealized forms modeled in the classical bronze to be ironic. Smith uses the traditional style and material of sculpture to depict extremely untraditional subject matter. In some cultures, the deer is symbolic of renewal or rebirth. Smith reveals nature and the connection between humans and animals. 

      Kiki Smith once stated that ninety-nine percent of her work is psychological, which opens it up to many possible interpretations. She has commented, “I always liked the idea of making things that are really open, that everybody can come to with their own ideas and responses.” Here, a relatively small deer, which does not look the least bit concerned, gives birth to a fully grown woman. The combination of woman and deer, along with the idealized, classical style of both figures, evokes Diana, the ancient Roman goddess of the hunt, who is often depicted accompanied by a deer. Deer also feature prominently in the spiritual beliefs of a number of Native American cultures, reflecting the importance of our ties to the natural world. This theme is very important to Smith, who once stated, “The fate of humankind is intimately interconnected with the health of the environment.” If we destroy the environment, symbolized in this work by the deer, we, too, will cease to exist. Smith is not trying to teach a specific lesson: “I’m not trying to make didactic work that has literal interpretations. . . . I try to be as vague as possible! I want things to be open. I don’t want to tell people how to think.”

      After researching Smith's work, I've learned that she prefers the concepts of her art be open to interpretation by the viewer. The composition and placement of the subjects in the sculture give the work movement. Naturally, we read from left to right and this picture of the sculpture reads from left to right and high to low. The way the light plays off the bronze gives the monotone sculpture monochromatic hues. The life size scale of the deer and woman helps the viewer relate to the subject.
      Although to some this image may be disturbing, I think it is kind of beautiful. I think that the story relates to the relationship between humans and animals, how similar we all are. I feel that it could also speak of the reincarnation of humans into other earth creatures. I love that this piece can be interpreted by different people, each in their own way.

Conclusion-What I have Learned...

I’ve wanted to organize an exhibition on nature for several weeks. This week, we were assigned, as the final exam, the opportunity to build and create an “art gallery”.

O.K., I have to admit it. I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to art so my ‘critique’ may have been coming from a blank slate. But here’s what I noticed…

First – Simplicity rules! The first display I entered had some abstract stuff but it was so busy and complicated. I’m sure some fans of the abstract art would argue that this was ‘too complicated for average art people to grasp and understand…blah blah blah.’ But then you get to the more popular exhibits and what did I notice…Simple! The art was simple. You ‘got it’ as soon as you saw it.

Second – Shock and awe works. Check out this picture of a piece created titled Naoko Ito Urban Nature, talk about shock and awe! Here’s a piece that was created entirely by ‘jars and pieces of a tree limb’. Its beautiful but also simple at the same time.

But wow…I think you could imagine, this got some of the most attention in the art gallery.

And third – Use basic colors for maximum impact! The simplest art works seemed to have a common theme…They used a minimum amount of colors and the colors they did use were reds, blues, greens, yellows…No neon greens, no hot pinks, no crazy colors, just simple power colors.

Put this all together and I just kept saying to myself…This stuff works in art just as much as it works in business. Think of the most effective splash and squeeze pages you have seen while surfing the traffic exchanges and you’ll find…

1. Simple designs

2. The Use of Shock and Awe

3. Good use of colors

What else can we learn from art that applies to business? I know, seems a bit weird for a post in Hit Exchange News, but I tend to see lessons in business around everything I do these days.

I found it a bit challenging to write effective description on each art piece that I selected. I also found it a bit challenging to choose these works of art. There are so many different and amazing works of art and I found it hard to narrow down the selection to just ten works. I found it was more natural an easier to enjoy looking at all the art. I found it calming and got a sense of peace by looking at these works of art.

How do I feel about the finished product? Basically I am finished, however I also feel that there is so much more that I would like to add, so many other pieces of art would fit in so well in the gallery.  I am very pleased with the final gallery, but also want to add more to it as well.

I found that while places these works of art together that there seemed to be a common threat between the artists, such as they all seem to have a strong love for animals, nature, and the outdoors. These artists seem to have similar backgrounds and family lives. I even found that a couple of them have similar religious beliefs.