Amanda Stein
visit my artist website at amandastein.com
4/9/2014
Artist: Patrick Dougherty
Built primarily from tree saplings woven together, each sculptures is approximately a three-week construction project where Dougherty and his group of volunteers carefully create the habitat or environment of this a tangled web of all natural materials. Because the sculptures are made of organic matter they disintegrate, break down and fall apart, becoming part of the landscape once again.
been creating Stickwork. But his construction work began when he was 28, working for the Air Force in the health and hospital administration. He decided to buy property in North Carolina and build his own house from the materials on the site. Collecting fallen branches, rocks and old timber, Dougherty was able to construct his home, in which he still lives with his wife and son, with a few additions. By 36, Dougherty decided to return to school for sculpture and attended the art program at the University of North Carolina. His interest in what nature had to offer led him to develop his tangled sculptures. Each sculpture is different and depends greatly on the site. Each project is different and depends on the volunteers that participate and the public that never fails to stop and watch the sculptures being woven together.
4/8/2014
Artist: Nils Udo
"Turning nature into art? Where is the critical dividing line between nature and art? This does not interest me. What counts for me is that my actions . . . fuse life and art into each other. Art does not interest me. My life interests me, my reaction to events that shape my existence."
German artist Nils Udo is another legendary environmental artist, working with the natural environment since the early 1970s. Like other artists in his genre, he uses items found on site to build his installation pieces, which range from large nests to colorful mixtures of leaves.
Udo's primary metaphor is Nest, that circling down into the comfort of Earth; his deep playful affinity is for berries and blossoms.
Udo works on site using found berries, leaves, sticks, the movement of water, the growth of plants. Each piece is in response to the landscape and materials he finds around him. The beauty of nature and the gently altered landscapes revealed in Nils-Udo's work are entrancing and mysterious. It is a seductive world of "potential utopias", colorful mounds, giant nests and dreamy days in the forest. Nature is the source and inspiration.
"Even if I work parallel to nature and only intervene with the greatest possible care, a basic internal contradiction remains. It is a contradiction that underlies all of my work, which itself can't escape the inherent fatality of our existence. It harms what it touches : the virginity of nature... To realize what is possible and latent in Nature, to literally realize what has never existed, utopia becomes reality. A second life suffices. The event has taken place. I have only animated it and made it visible."4/8/2014
Artist: Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson is an American sculptor and writer associated with the Land Art movement. His large-scale sculptures, called Earthworks engaged directly with nature and were created by moving and constructing with vast amounts of soil and rocks.Spiral Jetty, the most famous of all earth art pieces, is considered to be the masterpiece of American sculptor Robert Smithson.
Smithson preferred to work with ruined or exhausted sites in nature. Using the earth as his palette, he created archetypal forms: spirals, circles, and mounds."Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future."
"A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portableobject or surface disengaged from the outside world."
4/8/2014
Artist: Andy Goldsworthy
Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist producing site specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings.
"Movement, change,
light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try
to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place,
materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change
and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and
alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays,
decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I
find in nature."
Goldsworthy's art encompasses both ephemeral and permanent characteristics of change. When creating he is concerned with the relationships people have with their natural world. Goldsworthy's art invites you to look closer at what is surrounding us and focus perceptions through all five senses. He speaks passionately about his work. The artist feels that we are all part of nature and cannot separate from it.3/4/2014
We had only two destinations planned, first Aztalan State Park, and second The Dells. We started at 8:30 in the morning and got home safe and sound by 8:00 at night. Even with only two destinations, we saw and experienced so much more. Before reaching our first destination we listened to a podcast to learn more about the Aztalan culture.
During our visit we had come to the realization of exactly how cold it was, which in turn created an appreciation for exactly how these people living in the time period around 900 A.D. survived through the winter.
As we were
trudging through the snow and wind, I couldn’t help but smile. We were all so
vulnerable to the cold. But just like the trip to seven bridges, it did not
matter. As a group we are so in tune and considerate of what each individual
person desires to learn through these trips that we make the time and put forth
the energy to fully experience every destination we choose.Even if it is an old child's amusement park, and the only way to get there is by memory, or even an upside down building we have all wanted to visit since we were kids, and in the end it wasn't worth while.
With all
that said, what intrigued me the most while on this trip was how the barriers
were built by the Aztalan people and how they are still standing thousands of
years later. When looking closely you are able to see the axe marks from when
they were first built. It is crazy to
think that even after all this time the entire wall is still standing strong.Which makes me think of how things are made in todays day in age. I cant help but compare the crazy plastic architecture in the dells to the architectural design of the barrier. Things are no longer built to last, they are built to look “pretty."
It is such a strange comparison, Aztalan and the dells, but overall the trip worked out even better than expected. Ideas for a future project based off the trip are spinning around in my head waiting to become real.
2/26/2014
Longs work was dematerialized, part action, part documentation, and actual event in a specific place at a precise point in time.Long works with indigenous materials, such as stone, wood and mud, collected from his numerous walks around the world.
“in the mid sixties the language and ambition of art was due for renewal. I felt art had barely recognized the natural landscapes which cover this planet, or had used the experiences those places could offer. Starting on my own doorstep and later spreading , part of my work since has been to try to engage this potential. I see it as abstract art laid down in the real spaces of the world.”
Bringing together the unevenly shaped raw materials in the geometric structure, Long's works illustrate a recurrent theme, the relationship between man and nature, as he has explained, "You could say that my work is a balance between the patterns of nature and the formalism of human, abstract ideas like lines and circles. It is where my human characteristics meet the natural forces and patterns of the world, and that is really the kind of subject of my work."
"The outdoor and indoor works are complementary, although I would have to say that nature, the landscape, the walking, is at the heart of my work and informs the indoor works. But the art world is usually received 'indoors' and I do have a desire to present real work in public time and space, as opposed to photos, maps and texts, which are by definition 'second hand' works. A sculpture feeds the senses at a place, whereas a photograph or text work (from another place) feeds the imagination. For me, these different forms of my work represent freedom and richness – it's not possible to say 'everything' in one way."
2/24/2014
So this coming Sunday all of
the Midwest Field reporters are going on a trip towards the dells. There aren’t
really set places from each of us to go visit—because of the fundraiser things
have been a little scattered and not completely organized how they were before
the last trip. But that doesn’t really bother me at all. I had planned my
destination to be Devils Lake because I have wanted to go there for a few
months now, and figured why not do it on the group trip! But it was a little
too far out of reach to do for a one day trip visiting multiple places. Which
is fine. I don’t really know what to expect for Sunday. I love going on trips that aren’t completely
planned, it gives us more room to discover new things/ destinations that we
were never expecting in the first place.
Which is one of my focuses in my work, is going with the flow and not
expecting things to go a certain way, but rather just letting things happen as
they go and work with what you have. Which is why I also think one of my favorite
words is serendipity!
2/14/2014
Artist: Ursula von Rydingsvard
Von Rydingsvard is best known for creating large-scale, often monumental sculpture from the cedar beams which she painstakingly cuts, assembles, and laminates, finally rubbing powdered graphite into the work's textured, faceted surfaces.
von Rydingsvard was born in Deensen, Germany, in 1942. Her mother was Polish, and her father, a peasant farmer at the time, was Ukranian. The artist was raised in a devoutly Catholic family of seven children. Folling WWII, the family faced the aftermath of german defeat and was relocated to nine different refugee camps for displaced persons. In those camps, which von Rydingvard has described as "places where survival was very difficult," she found her earliest connection to wood. She simutaneously nurtures and rejects this association because it both informs and limits interpretations of her sculpture.
1/30/14
Response to Milwaukee Trip
Our first stop of the day was Seven Bridges (my chosen destination) I had never been there during the dead of winter, and was shocked once we saw the beach. I felt like we were no longer on the beach of lake Michigan in Milwaukee. I was taken back by the monstrous size of the icebergs Lake Michigan’s waves created on the shoreline. I felt so small when standing looking out at the waters horizon line. I felt as if I had entered a different world and I couldn’t help but smile about it. This day was so unbelievably cold, but not even the cold could faze me. It actually didn’t seem to faze anyone; the cold was so insignificant compared to the beautiful view we got to experience as a group.
1/29/2014
Artist: Michael Heizer
Michael Heizer is concerned with disasters created by mankind: “part of my art
is based on an awareness that we live in a nuclear era. We're probably living
at the end of civilization”
For heizer he was determined to be a contributor to the
development of American art, to not simply continue European art.
Formally sculptural in
their engagement with space and mass, solid
and void, heizers works were sited far from the sculptures traditional
contexts: the gallery or civic space.
He wanted to make art that was American and purged of dependence
on European traditions.heizer turned to the deserts of the west because there
he could find, as he expressed it “that kind of unraped, peaceful, religious
space artists have always tried to put in their work.” His comments about the
art market, taken in tandem with the works he made away from the city context
provoked much comment and discussion at the time; and perhaps produced in
future readings of land art an over emphasis on the rejection of a commodified,
art market system and the projection of a utopian, anti capitalist edeal for
art.
1/28/14
I have been to Seven Bridges more than a handful of times. It is one of the best places in Milwaukee to visit to be surrounded by nature at its finest. Seven Bridges is the second largest park in Milwaukee County. It offers an easy hike through woods and ravines, and offers beach access as well. Living in Milwaukee can be overwhelming—especially as a college student. Which is why I feel it is necessary to go back into nature in order to slow things down, take in a deep breath, and appreciate what we tend not to see.
We are all guilty of getting caught up in what we are doing on a day to day basis. I feel it is necessary to get away from all the every day business of the city. Which is why I chose to go to Seven Bridges Park for one of our stops on our first trip through Milwaukee.
I chose not to have a planned agenda when arriving. I want everyone to breathe in the fresh air and let their mind escape into a different reality.
I feel an important aspect of life is letting things happen naturally. Expectations can interrupt the greatest elements in life. Through this independent study I want to have the group appreciate and experience the little serendipitous moments life offers us.
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