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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sculpture - Placement and Context



Sculpture doesn't have to be large or expensive to be wonderfully effective.

Selection, Placement and Context, are often as important as the art object itself. They frame how we see art.

Selection means means taking it out of it's retail context - perhaps ignoring dozens of others just like it, and putting it in a new situation. Selection means knowing what you're looking at and exactly what you can do with it. Or maybe it's loving a sculpture enough to purchase it and then being patient enough to wait and discover what it's perfect placement will be.

Placement gives new context to sculpture.

This plump little figure ceramic figure is holding calla lilies. In this NW Portland garden, her place of honor is just outside the living room. Standing at the base of the flower garden, it's as if she has her own little flower stall, selling flowers to anyone on the deck.

To the gardener her meaning might have begun as a memory piece, bought on a trip to Mexico, but to visitors to the garden, her placement gives her meaning. Often the art itself evokes a meaning, but it's totally ok to give your own private symbolism or meaning by how and where you place it..

In our damp climate mosses and lichens grow easily on the porous soft fired clay surface, adding another layer of beauty and meaning that speaks of the passage of time.

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