Journal

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Virtual Reception for “Emergence” Exhibit

Pacific Northwest Sculptors hosted a virtual for the “Emergence” online sculpture exhibit. View the recorded event. The reception celebrated the first online sculpture exhibit presented by the group. Entrants from 32 states submitted over 500 works.

View Reception Video

View Exhibit

Best of Show: John Siblik – River Weaving,

Author, critic and curator, Richard Speer was the juror for the exhibit. He shared his observations and discussed his selections. The show included 61 pieces.

“River Weaving,” received the Best of Show award, created by John Siblik, Associate Professor of Art at Northern Illinois University. The environmental installation represents years of evolution from concept to realization. The piece includes 103 elements installed in a quarter mile of river.

As Siblik describes his installation, “The river forms the Warp and the Elements placed in the river form the Weft. Each Element is 6 feet by 3 feet by three feet. The elements are made from Willow canes which often grow along rivers, marshes and wetlands. The original design for River Weaving dates to 1986.”

Other award winners include: First place to Stephanie Robison; Second Place to Gard Jones; and Honorable Mentions for Jessica Bodner and Karen Theisen.

“I am Leading this from What I Need as a Sculptor.”

Patrick Gracewood interviews sculptor, Alisa Looney

PG. I’m curious about artists who combine different disciplines. We share a love of drawing, dance, and sculpture. I’d like to talk about process. When we are focused on “Making ART” it is easy to ignore our body’s needs. How do you care for your spirit’s needs as a sculptor? Ignoring that aspect is problematic if we want to create art that communicates spirit instead of just manufacturing a skillful commodity.

AL. Many of the stretches and exercises that I do are essential for my body to function and to do physical work. Movement is key to keep my body mind and spirit all working properly. If I don’t move, I am literally in pain, my mind is not happy and my spirit feels stuck and I can’t draw well. Also, the computer is the hardest on my neck so I tend to avoid working on it.

How A Sculptor Translates Movement Into Form

I am still very drawn to depicting movement, yet not as much directly to the image of the dancer(s) as I was before. I have always been held captive by the energy of the body, and how it is the same energy as the river, the flow of life, the power of it, a strength of the body, the balance, the completeness of one human expression. My consciousness is expanded to the broader recognition of the web of life. How I can best depict our deep connection to nature and to each other?

One recent piece was inspired by the vision of humans breathing with the trees. We support the trees with our out-breath, and they support us with their oxygen. This was largely inspired by Treesister’s meditations which include gentle movement, and focuses on the deep connection to nature and trees. I am exploring how we co-exist with nature, how we can support the healing of our world and each other. This is primary to me now.

Currently I’m making an enamel on steel spirit mask. It depicts the rich layer of soil and fungus deep in the roots of the trees. Trees and fungus support each other with life giving properties. The roots take the shape of a human face, and the piece is titled: Rooting Tree Spirit.

I have had many, many years of movement – explored through dance and then brought that energy into drawings and paintings. Over the years that has developed what I call Sketch in Motion. I enjoy teaching this process.

Dance of a Sculptor

As a dancer, the movement I am longing to do is largely outside, along the river, under the trees. I have decided to start a movement class near our home and studio called: “Move with ease in the trees.” It is my hope that this brings movers to me that also feel this calling to move and to connect with the trees and nature. I will keep it gentle and improvisational, for any age, and will provide art supplies to allow whatever self-expression or inspiration to come out. Afterward, we warm ourselves up indoors and gradually take it outdoors as the movers feel comfortable to do so. I am leading this from what I need as an artist.

PG. Thank you, Alisa. I love the idea of leading from what you need. An artist doesn’t just make a product but is someone who integrates the different interests of life as a creative process.

Watch Alisa’s process video to see her combination of creative processes. https://alisalooney.com/about/process-video/

To learn more about Patrick’s work, Pacific Northwest Sculptors, and contact us today!

How drawing influences sculpture

Sculpture takes a great deal of time to create. How do you think through a sculpture?

Not just the mechanical/technical process, but the important aesthetic work of meaning.

What do you want it to say, and how do you shape a physical object to have emotional resonance for others?

Drawing sharpens both your eye and your hand. To be able to record what you see takes practice. A lot of practice. If you’re a sculptor, drawing also helps you understand what you WANT to see. Drawing becomes the conversation between you and the muse to discover what the art wants to be.

Detailed drawings can be a blue print to follow so that the finished sculpture looks like the original rendering. Drawing can be a detailed map for sculpture, but it’s not the three dimensional territory. A flat two dimensional drawing can restrict your spatial thinking. As a sculptor, it’s your job to fully explore every angle, facet and form, even if it’s a bas relief.

These days, I use water colors to think through new sculpture. It’s so much easier to make a bad drawing than it is a bad sculpture. Don’t like it? Make another drawing. Quick drawings and loose washes of color keeps my thinking flexible, open to different possibilities and meanings. Carving feels playful, more exploration than execution. Some of that looseness even makes it all the way through into the finished work!

Look at the drawings of sculptors to see how they use drawing to think through their sculpture. Rodin’s sketches are loose washes of color with lightly drawn ambiguous lines. Think about how the faceted surfaces of his bronzes flicker and bounce light and catch shadows.

Michelangelo’s cartoons are often detailed blueprints for finished work. Look and see how he’s drawing how light hits a form, he’s thinking about volume and surfaces.

Consider your materials. If you use a pen or brush, you train yourself to see lines, through lines, contour lines, etc. If you’re using a charcoal or soft pencil, you attune your eyes to nuance of form, shadows, volume. What medium draws you?

Each drawing is another opportunity of composition, editing and thinking. As you draw, you shape HOW you see and WHAT you see. As a sculptor, drawing sharpens all your skills so you can make what you WANT to see happen in three dimensions.

To learn more about Pacific Northwest Sculptors, contact us today!

Elements of art: Thoughts about Lines

Just there on the office floor are 3 good sized boxes of comics. They are there because a friend of my nephew’s passed away and willed him his collection. They are Golden Age comics. That is from the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s. There are several holy grails of comic art in there. In particular, for me at least, a 1952 issue of Walt Disney’s Comic and Stories. This issue came in the mail when I was 5. I could not read. Ran all over the house pleading for someone to read it to me. All my normal readers were busy except grandma who was visiting from Salt Lake. Could she read? She’s so old. Boy could she. She had a remarkable voice. Had a hint of frog in it. She read me the thing, us sitting on the edge of my bed. I never forgot. I am writing this as a direct result of that little episode.

Seventeen years later a friend and I are taking a drive north from Vallejo, Ca. We stop at a little store for snacks. I see a comic book rack. I buy a Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories for 12 cents. It is the same story, reprinted. I bought it and read it for myself this time. I began buying them monthly and eventually acquired great piles of the things. I became a cartoonist sculptor. That particular artist was Carl Barks who passed away 17 years ago at the age of 99. Carl was from Merrill, Oregon and worked as a writer for the early Donald Duck cartoons. After a strike at Disney in 1941, he began working as the Duck cartoonist for Dell Publishing. He was very good and very prolific.

Why does this matter? What does it have to do with sculpture? Beyond Barks’ storytelling was the drawing, the lines, expressions and gestures. They were all dead on. Alive. In most studios where cartoons are pumped out by the bucket load are model sheets pasted to the wall.

If you want to draw something lifeless use one of those. The thing that made Bark’s drawing so good is that every expression or gesture is unique to the situation. If the expression is just right then you not only get it but you feel it. You know exactly what that particular curve in that line means deep down. To get this right is a bit like method acting. You have to feel it, you have to be that as you draw it. This applies to sculpting as well. It’s like being one with what you are doing.

Humans are adapted to finely interpret facial and body expressions. There are shades of meaning in a facial expression that can change with just the teensiest nudge of a lip line. It’s a complex language all its own which we understand right from birth. The lines themselves can have meaning, such that the shape of a line on a face when applied to the curve of an abstract sculpture conveys some of the original meaning. Car makers know this and if you’ve ever been tailgated by a ‘53 Buick you know what I’m saying.

Like words, line curves can carry connotations. In this way a simple line can speak directly to one’s emotions whether that line is part of a face or the silhouette of a sculpture.

Pacific Northwest Sculptors member George Heath's classic comic collection

Frogwood Collaborations: Sculptors share techniques and perspectives

6 days and 6 nights filled with making art with 38 other artists… what could be better? We usually were at work by 7:30 am and continued sometimes to 11:30 and later. It was amazing to see people simply drop their egos within a couple of days and simply play with one another, creating art. There were no rules such as- how much was to be made, how to make it, how to connect with others, how many to work on a piece, how to warm up or any other rules that you could think up. We were simply there with tools and art supplies that we brought and a ton of tools and art supplies that were already there. Some had been there before, some had not, most were accomplished artists in their fields and all were ready to play. The word that comes to mind first in trying to describe it to people is – profound. It made me call to a deeper part of me and simply create more freely.

Included in the array of makers were wood turners, welders, a blacksmith, coppersmiths, jewelers, sculptors, weavers and even a couple of people that made instruments. This next year the plan is to invite even more folks. A few people traveled home each night but most stayed in tents and cabins around a place called Camp Colton in Colton, Oregon, about an hour SE of Portland. The affair is catered with amazing food and I bunked with the most wonderful people. You’d think that 3 women in a tiny cabin room would be a problem, especially with the bathroom outside in another part of the building. Nope, it was really enjoyable talking excitedly about our day when we did bump into each other there.

Below is one of the pieces that I collaborated on – I made the stand and the boat and all of the pieces including the sail are made by 9 other artists.

Frogwood

Giacometti – Charioteers Rolling in the Money

A hundred and one million dollars is a lot of money but that’s what hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen paid in 2015 for Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, The Chariot. Giacometti was a multifaceted artist who achieved his greatest recognition for his freakishly elongated spider-like human figures. A prominent existentialist philosopher explained Giacometti’s figures as depicting the estrangement of modern (post WWII) individuals living in an empty cosmos devoid of meaning.

Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture, The Chariot, 1950

To me, one thousand and ten dollars is a lot of money and I was thus inspired to carve and assemble my own Spoon Charioteer. The one hundred and one million dollar version of Giacometti’s bronze masterpiece is number two of an edition of six, cast in 1951-52, and is only three inches less than six feet tall. In comparison, my humble version stands only three inches more than two feet high (25Hx8x12 inches) and is made of scraps of wood and metal. The most cunning features of my chariot are the wheels made from Progresso soup can lids, drawer pull escutcheons, and a rusted electrical cord spool. Everyone should have a shop with such serendipitous junk. My Spoon Charioteer is really one half unpainted black walnut spoon and one half painted and low relief carved charioteer.

Robert McWilliams sculpture, Spoon Charioteer — Robert McWilliams’ sculpture, Spoon Charioteer

A spoon may seem to be a perplexingly mundane motif for serious sculpture but I have been first, whittling, and now carving spoons since 1972, so even if you send the sheriff to try to make me stop, I won’t. Although otherwise not remotely comparable, my spoons are to me what Michelangelo’s ignudi (naked men-women) were to the greatest sculptor who ever lived. Spoons combine the male handle with the female cup, the sinuous, unpredictable curves of the voluptuous mature woman with the predictable stiffness of the militaristic male and the convex with the concave; and spoons are neither left or right, or up or down, and they spoon (nest) in perfect unity.

The charioteer side of my sculpture is an androgynous, golden haired adolescent who looks to me like one of the Archaic kourus that preceded the golden age of Classical Greek sculpture. He is gloriously beautiful, naïve, and lusty. He is representative the new generation, both female and male, the one that always, and without fail that rolls in to replace the cynical, the plumb tuckered out, and the put into barn wet and tired.

Spoon Charioteer is not a mere copy like Steve Cohen’s, mine is original, unique, and still for sale.