Artists Make Creative Leaps by Taking Global Risks

A summary by Donna Dodson from the recent International Art Residencies and Symposia panel

Mary Sherman set the stage with the history of US residencies. They were designed to promote national agendas in contrast to what they have become, a forum for raising awareness of being a citizen in the world. She gained the perspective of being one among many and an awareness of how other nationalities have conversations with and about Americans. It changed her knowledge of art history to be a part of it in a global sense versus a national sense.

Batu made the point that sharing tools and learning new things from his peers was the part of the symposia that he looked forward to the most. As a teacher, he is energized from the experience of participating in symposia with peers from all over the world and building life long friendships. He also noted the importance of flattening the hierarchy of teacher/student through travel, exchange and sharing. These values are fundamental to his art making practice.

Donna Dodson went to Switzerland with the idea that she wanted to make a pregnant stork figure. The piece was developed in conversation with Kiki Thompson, a resident of Verbier, to celebrate the recent baby boom in town. She planned to use her vocabulary on a larger scale, but in a site specific way to the Alps. The piece changed in conversation with Paul Goodwin, curator to Tate Britain, who challenged her to take a bold risk with the placement of the piece, and not face it to the tourists, but perch it on the precipice of the valley, about to take wing.

Robert Markey described his public art and mural work in Brazil and Cambodia. As an external agent to a community, he is able to re-shape the relationships of street youth to police, and to demonstrate their value to the community. He teaches mural making and drawing skills, and in the process gets a community excited about art. By working internationally, he is able to reach a broader audience through his artwork than through temporary or gallery exhibits, and his art can have an impact beyond his local community in Mass. He brings back a global awareness to his studio practice, for example human trafficking, which is the subject of his recent work.

Roz Driscoll responded to the shape of the rivers, trees, and Greek architecture to create site specific work in residence in England at the Crypt Gallery. She described the process of leaving behind her studio, tools and materials, and making a creative leap, or taking an artistic risk she needed to in order to grow in her work. She brought nothing but she had everything with her, i.e. her experiences, knowledge and collaborative relationships to make new artwork.

John Weidman said as a director of an international symposium he wants artists to come empty, to experience the place, and to create from the heart. He doesn’t want artists to come with a proposal or pre-conceived notion of a piece. In his own work, he often re-visits narratives or themes, but crafts his work in site specific materials, referencing the past, present, future.

Kiki Thompson emphasized three points, Art Culture and Education. 3D foundation brought in a curator at the beginning and the end of the residency to shape the dialogue and conversation. They offered classes to the children in the community to de-mystify the art making process. They brought the artists to Art Basel which pushed her to make a creative leap with her piece, Samsara, or life cycle. She chose to make it black b/c she was responding to the black pieces at the fair the most. Life cycle celebrates birth and death, as a parallel to the seasons of nature.

For Andy Moerlein going to Switzerland and being in the Alps was like coming home to the mountains of Alaska. The people who loved the mountains loved his work the most. For Andy, there was a sharing of himself through his art and an understanding by the residents of Verbier that took place and transcended language. Art bridged the communication gap where meaning and an exchange of value, took place, he gave them art, and they gave him their appreciation.

Laura Baring-Gould described her experiences in Thailand. It changed her perspective of globalization where the stereotype was cheap goods are made in a poor country and consumed by a rich country. As an artist, a maker, and a story teller, Laura is using art to teach Americans about their history, and the Thai people are helping her with their casting techniques, ancient traditions, spiritual practices. They became real to one another, beyond the stereotypes of rich Americans who point at what they want done to working peers in the studio and poor Thai people lacking modern technology to people who are rich in the knowledge of their history, and who have the connectedness of art and culture as the fabric of their lives.

We heard people say that the dialogue would empower the young people in the audience to try out their own ideas in the world. We hope our experiences would encourage the students to take advantage of opportunities to travel abroad and learn from their experiences by reflection and peer dialogue. All of the presenters shared an idea that they wanted to put into place with the help of other people and resources in the community. That’s how we make things happen.

Thank you very much to our EVENT Hosts and SPONSORS:
The Derryfield School & Swissnex Consulate of Switzerland

Moderator:
Mary Sherman is the Director of TransCultural Exchange, an organization dedicated to promoting international art and the understanding of world cultures. Besides her work as an advocate of international creative dialogue, Mary Sherman is an artist and critic. She has participated in residencies in Romania, China, Korea, Chicago and was recently a guest artist at PROGR in Bern, Switzerland. Ms Sherman was an Artist in Residence of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, Cambridge MA.

Panelists:
Laura Baring-Gould, sculptor/installation artist. With extensive travel and work experience in various international settings (Mexico, Ireland, Southeast Asia), Baring-Gould received a 2008 Fulbright grant for artistic investigations in bronze and bamboo in Thailand. From 2006 - 2010 Baring-Gould lived and worked in Thailand creating public art commissions. Her presentation will focus on observations of how art and art-making are differently practiced and culturally valued, and the opportunities present in meaningful global interaction.

Sculptor Rosalyn (Roz) Driscoll just completed a summer artist's residency at Space, a program supported by Dartington Hall Trust, in Devon, UK. Her sculptures explore the sense of touch and the experience of the body. Driscoll’s engagement with touch and perception has led to her participating worldwide at conferences for neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, engineers, philosophers, designers, art historians, artists, and people working with disabilities. Her work has been exhibited in the US, Europe and Japan. Ms. Driscoll has received awards from the New England Foundation for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico.

Robert Markey is a painter, sculptor and multimedia artist. He has been traveling to Brazil and Cambodia for a number of years to work with disadvantaged kids creating mosaic murals. He is committed to purposeful community arts investment.

Batu Siharulidze, Associate Professor at BU and Director of the Graduate Sculpture program. He has a long resume of international residencies in China, India, Turkey, Great Britain, USA, the Netherlands and Georgia.

Kiki Thompson has exhibited in New Zealand, Switzerland, New York, California and London. Ms. Thompson is Co-founder of the Verbier 3-D Sculpture Park Residency and was a participating artist in its first edition in 2011. She lives and works in Verbier, Switzerland.

John Weidman is the Director of the Andres Institute of Art (the site of an annual International Stone Symposia) as well as Director of the Nashua NH Sculpture Symposium. Besides his responsibilities as a Symposia Director, John is an internationally known sculptor who has participated in two or more international residencies/symposia annually for over a decade.

Event Hosts:
Donna Dodson graduated cum laude from Wellesley College in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts. Since 2000, Dodson has been honored with solo shows nationwide for her wood sculptures. Dodson enjoys public speaking, and has been a guest speaker in conferences, panels and forums at museums and universities in North America . She is a member of the Wellesley College Friends of Art and She won a George Sugarman Foundation Grant in 2007. In 2011 she participated in the Verbier 3D Foundation's Artist Residency and Sculpture Park in the Swiss Alps where she created monumental outdoor sculpture.

Andy Moerlein has an extensive resume of public art works. His work has been shown in museums, sculpture gardens, and galleries from Alaska to New York. In 2011 he participated in the Verbier 3D foundation's Artist Residency and Sculpture Park in the Swiss Alps.

Mr. Moerlein has been an arts advocate, educator, and professional juror for over 30 years. He has been a teacher and gallery director at the Derryfield School in Manchester NH for 15 years. Moerlein holds a BA from Dartmouth College and an MFA from Cornell University. He lives in Bow, NH.

Press Release: Passage by Harries / Heder

Images L to R: Poetry Trellis, Acoustic Chairs










Passage

We are pleased to announce the opening of the public art installation Passage at the new South Mountain Community Library. Passage is a multi-faceted public artwork that focuses on poetry and the landscape of South Phoenix.

The Four Poetry Trellises span the path as it runs past the Library and towards the Western Canal. Letters welded to the canopy project shadow lines of poetry onto the path. The four couplets were written by noted local poet Alberto Ríos, meditating on the South Mountain landscape.

The three Acoustic Chairs are grouped by the Library entrance. Sitting in these Chairs,
people experience intimate readings of poetry. The collection of poems was curated by Ríos. The collection features 19 poets with writings about that draw on South Phoenix and the landscape of the area.

Jumbled steel letters embedded in the concrete sides of the Chairs and in the surrounding pavement encourage visitors to make their own words and poetry.

For more information please visit:
www.harriesheder.com.

South Mountain Community Library, 7050 South 24th Street, Phoenix, Arizona 85042

From the HarriesHeder website:

"Over the past 8 years we have been involved with the rapidly changing environment of the South Mountain area of Phoenix. During that time this area of citrus orchards and flower farms became a built-up residential community. We have been able to contribute to the pedestrian, bicycle and equestrian connections, and to the public image of this community through a series of projects: Arbors & Ghost Trees for Baseline Road and The Zanjero’s Line for the Highline Canal Trail that have been completed and the soon to be built Western Canal Bridge. Passage creates another link in these trails, one that relates to the others and adds new artistic ideas particularly fitting for the new South Mountain Community Library.

Illustration showing location of Library, Western Canal, and art elements

Passage is a multi-faceted, collaborative public artwork. The South Mountain Community Library is operated jointly by the Phoenix Public Library and South Mountain Community College. Used by students and the community at large, the Library is a magnet for community identity and the spirit of learning. To reflect this energy, we wanted to integrate visual elements with words. With the help of noted local poet, Alberto Ríos, we focused with poetry onto the South Mountain landscape, the quality of words, and the contents of the Library. The project consists of four Poetry Trellises and three Acoustic Chairs.

This just in from the New York Times, September 23, 2011 on Boston Sculptor Joseph Wheelwright's show on view through May, 2012

It’s a Giant Person! And It’s a Tree? It’s Art

By SUSAN HODARA

Photo credit: Margaret Fox “Pine Man,” from the Joseph Wheelwright exhibition in Katonah. The tallest of the five tree figures on display is 27 feet high.

ONE figure towers over the Katonah Museum of Art‘s South Lawn, bark-skinned, wild-haired, branching arms and fingers splayed. Another poses by the museum’s entrance, and three more take their places in the sculpture garden, blending in with the over-100-year-old Norwegian spruces as if they belong to the landscape, yet gesticulating in a way that is distinctly human.

The monumental works in “Joseph Wheelwright: Tree Figures,” from 16 ½ to 27 feet tall, began life upside down as live trees rooted in the soil on the artist’s 40-acre property in East Corinth, Vt.

“I start by looking for trees with bifurcated trunks,” said Mr. Wheelwright, a sculptor who lives in Boston with his wife, Susan MacGregor Wheelwright.

“If the hips and the swing of the legs look good, I poke down into the roots to see what the tree is going to give me for shoulders. Sometimes you can follow the root structure all the way out to the fingers.”

Having identified a promising specimen, Mr. Wheelwright, 63, fells the top portion of the tree, which will not be part of the figure, and then, using customized equipment, uproots and inverts the remainder.

“It’s a big deal,” he said. “You have to use a crane to gently remove it, or sometimes I build a ramp so when the tree falls it pulls the roots up and out.”

Completing the sculpture involves adapting and adding to the existing growth to form the head and facial features and position the arms and hands.

“I use every part of the tree that is appealing, but I don’t have any rules about not using other materials,” Mr. Wheelwright said. Often the heads are carved from laminated pine planks and then covered with bark.

The figures are made from an assortment of species. The three pieces in the museum’s sculpture garden, “Yellow Birch Figure,” “Cherry Figure” and “Oracle,” are made from yellow birch, cherry and pine trees.

Mr. Wheelwright has found that hornbeams, relatively short hardwood trees, are particularly suited to his purposes.

“They have fewer roots, but they always send out a few strong shoulders,” he said. “Smoke Jumper,” by the entryway, was created from hornbeam and then bronzed (it is the artist’s second bronzed large-scale tree figure).

The five tree figures in Katonah, sculptured from 2006 to 2008, are part of a group of 10 that Mr. Wheelwright, who also carves massive stone heads, has produced since 2003.

Since the 1970s, he has also been fashioning smaller figures from roots and branches. Five of those pieces, bronzed and ranging from 10 to 32 inches tall, are on view in the museum’s atrium through the end of the year.

Decades of trolling for sources in the forest have convinced Mr. Wheelwright that trees and humans share a common ancestor.

“There’s no question that we are descended from the same organism,” he said. “You see it all the time: an armpit will form at the bottom of a branch; then it will mound like a shoulder. And many times I’ve seen fingers that seem to grow like a hand, with a spray of three or four, and then something thicker that heads down like a thumb. It’s quite astonishing.”

Putting the tree figures on display at the Katonah Museum was a labor-intensive project that involved flatbeds, forklifts and slings.

“It took a week to get them here and unload them and set them up in the garden,” Nancy Wallach, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs, said.

The installation, she said, was one of the museum’s most ambitious to date, in terms of both the size of the sculptures (the heaviest weighs about two tons) and the complexity of securing them in the ground.

The tree figures will remain on view through next spring, giving museumgoers the opportunity to experience the works as the seasons change.

“Just wait till it snows,” Ms. Wallach said. “Can you imagine?”

“Joseph Wheelwright: Tree Figures,” through May in the Marilyn M. Simpson Sculpture Garden and on the South Lawn at the Katonah Museum of Art, 134 Jay Street (Route 22). For more information: katonahmuseum.org or (914) 232-9555.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 25, 2011, on page WE10 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s a Giant Person! And It’s a Tree? It’s Art.