Line in art

Editor's Notes

• #6: Each sculpture not only maps the meteorological landscape of a specific time and place, but is also a fully functional musical score to be played and interpreted by musicans on instruments as varied as piano, French horn and electrican guitar. You can hear and download the resulting tracks on Miebach’s site . http ://www.informationisbeautiful.nethttp ://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/index. cfm
• #8: My sculpture reflects an intense relationship between myself and the material with which I am working. This relationship is based on my reactions and responses to the material, the marks I make in it, and my own ideas. I continue to learn about myself and my material as the relationship progresses. Every piece I create is an experiment. I am never sure of exactly what I am going to do, or how it may change me or my work. I never know, when I begin, what my finished piece will look like.I work with many different materials, but the things which attract me to each, and the final sculptures are all closely related. For me, art is an intensification of nature. By this I mean that my art is the process of taking from a natural object, the qualities which seem most beautiful to me, and expanding those qualities to create a sculpture or painting. The theme of nature in my work is not truly a conscious goal. It seems to be more of an intuitive outcome of everything I create.Nature creates objects of such complexity, originality, and beauty, that the human mind is at a loss to compete. My amazement and wonder in the face of these creations is the reason behind my focus on nature in my work. I am interested in the shapes and textures of organic matter such as fossils, shells, and bones. The force of life and growth in animals and plants fascinates me. Landscapes such as mountains and forests are also a common subject of my art. My sculptures and paintings are abstracted from these natural objects in my efforts to find and portray what seems to me to be the most central and vital part of my subject.Like the subject matter of my work, the materials I use in my sculptures and paintings are natural. Each element, stone, water, fiber, or clay, has a beauty of its own before I ever begin to manipulate it. I try to integrate my impression of the most beautiful qualities of each material with the effects of natural weathering and a manual process of sculpting that material. My sculptures become a collaboration between myself and nature.
• #10: At the center of this work is a dark blue porcelain orb that resembles a blowfish, octopus, or other primitive sea creature, but also an artificial satellite.  On October 4, 1957, while Bontecou was a Fulbright fellow in Rome, the Russians launched Sputnik into outer space. The  first artificial satellite to successfully orbit the earth, Sputnik ushered in the Space Age and captivated Bontecou (and millions of others) in the process. But while allusions to outer space abound in this airy, galactic sculpture, it seems to suggest the ocean as much as it does the sky and the diminutive forms of insects as much as the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos. Translucent wire mesh throughout the work shimmers like the wings of a dragonfly, and the piano wire that holds the network of shapes in place is as delicate as insect appendages, or even a spider web. Bontecou was using new imagery to make a statement as old as art itself, about what she calls “the wonders and horrors” of nature, technology and the human heart. “Look at the stealth bomber,” she says. “It’s a beautiful thing up in the air, a piece of sculpture! But what it does is horror!” She sees its duality as a metaphor for all of us, for human nature. Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/bontecou.html#ixzz2JVJFOuRV Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
• #12: In 1955, Blagdon inherited an uncle’s farm and found he had a place to explore his interests as he chose. Having watched both his parents suffer terminal cancer, he hoped he might discover a way to heal pain and illness. Blagdon believed that the earth’s energies might be put to just such a use. He believed they held the inherent power to heal, and he set about making a “machine” to properly channel these powerful forces.A pastime of bending hay-baling wire into geometric forms grew into a consuming passion for making increasingly complex constructions that incorporated salvaged copper wire, metal foil, magnets, vials of earth, waxed paper, and myriad other substances and materials to collectively charge and heighten the machine’s power. In the early 1960s, Blagdon began installing his fabrications in a barn on the property, later building a workshop with an adjoining shed designed to permanently house the entire machine.Blagdon ultimately created a complex art environment in which paintings and mixed-media sculptures comingled with mineral elements and electrical conductors. Sufferers of pain or illness were invited in to let the unseen forces work magic. Blagdon called his project The Healing Machine, a work in constant progress wherein he fashioned, arranged, adjusted, and added to the complex installation every day for the next thirty years.
• #20: Interpretive Coral Description: Abstract wire sculpture based on a piece of surfaced coral. Dimensions: 10" x 13" x 16" Media: Copper and Steel wire. http://rachelbacus.com/portfolio_02.html