Six views of Richard Serra’s Wake
We wrapped up Drawing on Location yesterday at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Drawing a piece of art, whether it’s an old Dutch master in a stuffy museum or a giant abstract rusted metal situation in a sunny waterfront park, sometimes feels like the only way to experience it fully. In the latter case, you also have to deal with its entire environment, including those pesky trees. In looking at four different artists’ sketches of the same work, you can get a glimpse of their widely different interpretations of it.
Staci’s Wake manages to be both perky and ominous:
Lorri’s evokes some pastel futuristic utopia where people picnic on the grass in front of their wavy soviet apartment blocks:
Skye’s feel a little anthropomorphic sidling up to the trees in their urban canyon:
Kathy’s are possibly my favorite, marching in a line, their scale & relationship to the environment completely ambiguous:
And mine, I’ll leave to the viewer to decide…
Here is the whole class huddling against the wind amongst a smattering of local icons: