I’ll be giving a talk to the Friends of the Melrose Public Library next week about my sculpture, The Reader, installed there in 1999. I never expected it to become “iconic” but it’s great news. The talk time and more information here on Wicked Local.
“The Reader” soon after installation. Photo by Sharon Shea.
Come and see my talk and exhibit this coming Thursday at 1pm in the Museum’s project center. I had a great week last week talking about sculpture, how I make my work, and the American Renaissance sculptor Sally James Farnham, one of the early 20th century’s foremost monument sculptors, who grew up around the corner.
This is a projection piece I’ve been working on for over a year now, off and on. Once I figure out how to do a panoramic shot in the dark I’ll be able to show more. Most of the drawings are done on plexiglass chips, or else found plastic trash. I use either 3 or 4 overhead projectors, depending on how much wall is available. I was trying to sum up the materials used and came up with this: Actual and manufactured detritus, unfired clay, projected drawing on plexiglass, knitted mylar.
The title of the piece refers to the Vedic incarnation of the god Indra, who holds an infinite net with a jewel set at each node, signifying the interconnectedness of all life. I see the unfired clay objects as references to flesh–powdery and fragile–surrounded by the remnant-world of the Anthropocene, torn fragments of net at its center.
Take a look at my installation piece outdoors in the grape arbor in front of the Red Farmhouse, site of the Fruitlands experiment in vegan communal living run by Louisa May Alcott’s father, Bronson. Pieces on view in the art gallery related to women who influenced Fruitlands, including Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee and museum founder Clara Endicott Sears. If you haven’t been to see this remarkable landscape and collection of American art and antiques, visit on weekends this winter.
http://www.fruitlands.org/exhibitions
At Fruitlands, sculptor Carolyn Wirth is a free-range historian – The Boston Globe
