1. Membranes (1964 – 1967) |
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My early training was academic, learning how to model in clay a realistic portrait and the human figure. The first series of independent works were hammered steel forms made from a flat sheet, a rigid, formed membrane or skin with little reference to the human body. Then, in a return to the figure by way of organic form, I reduced the body to its most basic physicality: hard and soft, membrane and support, skin and bone. These sculptures have a canvas membrane outer surface, and a plywood endoskeletal structure within. In each work there is an interior structure that retains some direct reference to the human body or other organic forms. |
The surface configuration of the canvas was the result of the wooden structure it was attached to. These sculptures are composed of a series of independent segments, thought of as a linear sequence, but radiating around a vertical axis, an aspect that later becomes important in Space-holds, which follow. As important as the formal structures and sequences were to me, of far greater significance was the possibility that a particular sculpture could evoke in the mind of the viewer organic nonfigurative forms found in the natural world. |