January 1971. Steel. Dimensions: 57 × 36 × 40 in (145 × 91 × 102 cm). Private Collection, Florida.
Flight is my first welded-steel sculpture, created in a Sculpture 101 class at St. Lawrence University in 1971 in response to an assignment exploring line as the primary design element. As a beginning student with little firsthand exposure to museums and galleries, I looked primarily to books and was especially drawn to early 20th-century Russian Constructivists such as Naum Gabo, Vladimir Tatlin and Antoine Pevsner. Their use of linear structure to define space rather than solid mass helped inform the sculpture’s open, skeletal construction.
The title Flight reflects the work’s sense of lift, movement, and implied speed. Sweeping steel contours and intersecting lines create an open form that reaches into the surrounding space. Looking back, I can see in this first welded sculpture the beginnings of concerns that would continue throughout my work: line drawn in space, movement and balance, and the use of open structure to activate the space around a sculpture.
January 1971. Steel. Dimensions: 57 × 36 × 40 in (145 × 91 × 102 cm). Private Collection, Florida.
Flight is my first welded-steel sculpture, created in a Sculpture 101 class at St. Lawrence University in 1971 in response to an assignment exploring line as the primary design element. As a beginning student with little firsthand exposure to museums and galleries, I looked primarily to books and was especially drawn to early 20th-century Russian Constructivists such as Naum Gabo, Vladimir Tatlin and Antoine Pevsner. Their use of linear structure to define space rather than solid mass helped inform the sculpture’s open, skeletal construction.
The title Flight reflects the work’s sense of lift, movement, and implied speed. Sweeping steel contours and intersecting lines create an open form that reaches into the surrounding space. Looking back, I can see in this first welded sculpture the beginnings of concerns that would continue throughout my work: line drawn in space, movement and balance, and the use of open structure to activate the space around a sculpture.
Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo
Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo
Vladimir Tatlin
