Family Trees, a Hide and Seek Story, 2010. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, of Czech parents, Emilie Benes Brzezinski has lived in the United States since her childhood. Though her artistic career goes back to the early ’70s, a period in which she experimented with a variety of media, including plastic, latex, and wood fiber, she
When Words Fail: A Conversation with Peter Randall-Page
Nature provides a multifarious range of forms, held in suspended animation between the polarities of stasis and transformation. Peter Randall-Page offers a Neoplatonic view of the world through his work, linking these forms in order to explore analogies between seemingly unrelated phenomena.
Michael Jones McKean and the Set of All Things
In 2011, Michael Jones McKean began a series of segmented low-relief sculptures whose titles suggest an unnerving, impossible, but seductive universality. Each work is designated by a categorical term preceded by “the”—The Republic, The Religion, The Folklore, The Comedy, The Garden—singly and collectively referencing the human effort to interpret, theorize, associate, narrate, classify, and collate.
Paulina Webb: Rational Passions
The Buenos Aires-born sculptor Paulina Webb produces a great variety of work. After graduating from the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón and the National College of Fine Arts Ernesto de la Carcova, she completed her studies with a specialization in combined artistic languages at the National Institute of Arts, and she now teaches
Huang Zhen: Building the Image
On my recent travels to Beijing, I have looked for good young sculptors, but I have been mostly disappointed. A visit to the huge sculpture studio at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), acknowledged as China’s best art school, convinced me of the technical skill of the students, who were working on a copy
My Body Is Your Vehicle: A Conversation with Janine Antoni
Is it possible to touch something with sight, to feel something deeply in a total state of awareness? For Janine Antoni, creative process takes on a psychological disposition. She creates objects with an intense admiration of life, in which her body is your vehicle, a fulcrum of perception, in which senses are enabled through corporeal
Shayne Dark: Transformational States
Since the late 1990s, following experimental works in mediums as diverse as pottery, cement, plastic, cast metal, and glass, Canadian artist Shayne Dark has gained considerable attention for sculptures that he creates using elements found in nature—specifically, locally sourced branches, limbs, roots, and trunks of trees.
Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Instability: Chris Bradley’s Trompe L’oeil Masculinity
Chris Bradley, a Chicago-based sculptor, takes hold of one of the oldest drives in American art-making through studied simulations of various objects and materials. Successful trompe l’oeil not only seeks to convince viewers of a highly crafted imitation, but also requires a latent recognition of its falsity.
Wen-fu Yu: Living Sculpture
Bamboo is a common material in Taiwan, used for everything from construction scaffolding and billboard supports to baskets. Bamboo is one of the most abundant plants growing in the central mountain ranges of Taiwan, and it is a sustainable and renewable resource: sprouts grow into tall poles in two years.
Terrible Beauty: A Conversation with Pam Longobardi
In 2006, Pam Longobardi visited Hawaii’s South Point and discovered her life mission. Instead of finding an idyllic paradise on the remote beach, she was walloped by an overwhelming amount of marine debris. Since then, she has worked with cast-off plastic as her primary material, creating aesthetic arrangements with detritus that she has recovered from
