So, a few weeks back (or possibly months; I'm bad with days) I saw a post about your sculpture, and this might sound incredibly ignorant and dumb, but I just... don't get art. I'd love to understand it and the thinking behind it, but I don't. That said, I was wondering if, like, there's supposed to be some sort of "meaning" to your sculpture? I don't know how art works, so I don't know if I'm supposed to just view all art as I see it at face value or try to find some meaning or reason in it.
well! that’s a very broad and interesting question, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to answer it fully, but I can take a shot at giving a brief and rather simplistic introduction as well as answering your question about my piece
art is generally about a few things
- expressing/communicating some sort of message, meaning, emotion, or feeling — this can range from literally communicating a very specific message to very subtly implying whole spectrums of things
- providing an experience for the viewer — creating a situation in which the person viewing the art is compelled to feel something, whether that be purely philosophical/emotional, or purely spatial/sensory, or anywhere in between.
for many contemporary sculptors, myself included, this often means creating an object (or series of objects) that invites viewer interaction (mental as well as physical) not only by using properties like shape, form, scale, and color, but also by paying attention to the ways in which the objects interact with their environment.
that’s the major conceptual basis behind the piece — creating a physical and mental experience for the viewer using form, scale, color, and interaction with the surrounding landscape.
it’s about three feet high, seven feet wide, and twenty feet long, which is a fairly unusual shape/orientation for large-scale public sculpture — generally a field associated with terms like “tall” and “towering” and “monumental”, a very vertically-driven sort of view.
it’s low-profile, it’s subtle, it’s confident but not intimidating, it’s strong but fluid, and most importantly, it’s inviting — mentally, and physically. it’s an object that cannot be fully experienced from any less than every angle. it’s a completely different shape when viewed standing than it is lying down. it’s a completely different shape from the front than it is from the back, and from the side, and from anywhere in between. because of its location amid subtle hills, walking a wide circle around it presents the viewer with an even wider variation of angles.
the low, sweeping profile of the piece meshes with the landscape, while the colors — stark white on top with a bright red underside — contrast it. it stands out as a stroke of bold color set against the environment while simultaneously immersing itself into it.
so, to answer your question, the “meaning” behind my piece is not so much a specific message or idea, but an experience — its meaning is derived from the object itself and the viewer’s interaction with it.
hopefully that wasn’t confusing!
