What sculpture offers

In a sculpture, every line, every articulated surface, every size, every material, every pattern of smoothness and roughness, every color, every degree of gloss, every intensity and slant of light and shadow, and every combination of all of these, creates the work's peculiar presence. And every movement we make, every shift in our view, every feeling of patience or hurry, attention or distraction, shifts our entire gestalt, until, at last, we may see enough to gain a sense of the whole work and to feel its import. This is the visually apprehended experience that sculpture offers.

Seeing Sculpture

How often do we say: "Oh goodie, I get to make the effort to experience the peculiar aesthetic feeling that this work of art makes possible? "

Not often perhaps. It does help to know something about how to see art, and to know some of the things that can get in the way.

Before I get all systematic about how to see sculpture I want to write about one popular distraction that makes seeing any art more difficult.

If you went to my "About" page you noticed that it says, in yellow print on a nice black background: "See without knowing." Nothing else.

Why not write about myself? After all, it's nice to read stuff, to see pictures of an artist in action, explaining things, and so on, but anything you know about the artist is a distraction from the work.

The work should appear like magic, without explanation, out of nowhere, as though a space ship dropped it off in the night. Which is exactly what a web site does.

Click: and there it is.

I've thought about doing this magical dropping off thing at our local museum, since they don't want my work inside [yet]. I could install a sculpture out front in the middle of the night. Morning comes! And there it is! But, alas, I fear it might end up in a dumpster rather than inside where it belongs.

Well, with this little idea I admit revealing a bit about myself, a contradiction: but also an illustration, since this does distract from seeing the work.

Click: and it's gone.