Wednesday October 05th 2011, 9:35 pm
Filed under: Art,Materials
Sculptural work that often impresses me the most are those that use everyday, average materials that are not inherently beautiful. A good example is plain old scotch tape which is not typically seen as a sculptural material on it’s own however the character of the tape being clear, reflective and moldable lends well to building interesting shapes.
This video of a temporary installion is stunning – the music, the way the sculpture goes together, the lighting and shadows. Well done. Like a web in a forgotten corner of the city.
This next video is interesting because, unlike the pure beauty of the one above (although still beautiful, especially with the light), you get a better feel for how the sculpture is created in a more structural sense.
A trip to the ocean with another couple allowed us to score a really cool vacation beach house, obviously owned by some sort of designer that probably built many things themselves. There were a lot of great details throughout with great uses of wood and metal, like the ledge in front of the fireplace in the image below. A nautical theme ran throughout expressed through clean lines and interesting use of materials like the image above where metal cleats where attached to a wood strip for use as coat hooks. This detail was also in the bathrooms for towels.
The house actually sat along the edge of a lake just a block inland from the ocean and in an effort to reduce the disturbance along the lake edge, the house was raised up on metal beams, allowing the natural vegetation flow underneath with a simple gravel path to the staircase leading up to the entry deck.
A rain chain connects the roof to the ground with a stone splash block…
The deck leading to the canoe launch didn’t take out any trees…
The gravel driveway and the vegetated swale…
There were also some fun pieces of art and furniture. My favorites were the chair at the entry that was a simple piece of metal with a strip of tan leather through the top for a seat and especially the fabulous set of 3 paintings of frying eggs in the kitchen.
Tara Donovan, installation artist out of Brooklyn, New York, creates pieces made out of everyday ordinary objects like drinking straws, cups, fishing wire and paper. These simple objects when are then transformed into amazing textural and topographical works of art. The individual object then is almost no longer recognizable in it’s original form but has taken on a new life form. The installation in the image above feels like some sort of life form bubbling out of the ceiling, reflecting light in different ways throughout the form. But the piece is made simply with a sea of styrofoam cups and hot glue. A detail shot is below.
Below are images of an untitled piece from 2003 that uses paper plates held together by hot glue to form highly texture spheres the look almost soft and fuzzy from a distance.
“Haze” was made in 2005 from stacking an amazing amount of clear drinking straw to create a sensual wall that bubbles up in places that gives it an almost liquid look.
The following piece uses ripped up tarpaper that has been stacked into an undulating landform titled “Transplanted”. It was firt exhibited outdoors in the IBM Exhibition Space on 57th and Madison Ave. in New York City in the fall of 2003. Following it’s time in the outdoors, it was moved into the Ace Gallery indoor exhibition space.
