Showing posts with label Figurative Bust Sculpture Artists. Show all posts

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Ebitenyefa Baralaye, Artist, United States

Sculptor Ebitenyefa Baralaye’s

Ceramic Vessels

Pay Homage to His Ancestry

“Portraiture can serve as a record for people’s families, dynasties, and cultures,” reflects artist Ebitenyefa Baralaye. Following the racial reckoning of 2020 and the death of his father that same year, the Nigerian-born, Detroit-based sculptor has embraced figuration while contemplating his own identity. Two new bodies of work riff on the 19th-century face jugs created by enslaved people in the American South, particularly the work of David Drake, a.k.a. Dave the Potter. “There’s a duality,” Baralaye explains of the objects, which served both practical and spiritual purposes. “It speaks to the pain and agony of enslavement—the objectification of Black people but it’s also a vessel for poetic expression.” Finished in a black satin glaze, his Akanza series mixes his and his father’s abstracted facial features. Meanwhile, his All My Relation series (named after an inscription by Dave the Potter) pays homage to his Nigerian ancestors through an imagined archive of eyes, ears, and noses. Works from both projects go on display February 15 at Friedman Benda’s Los Angeles gallery, alongside large ceramic finials and columns inspired by the work of Yoruba artisan Olowe of Ise and Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. A finial, Baralaye notes, has almost as much to say as a face: “As the capstone of an architectural structure, it’s expressive, it describes and exalts the nature and context of a place, it conveys a sense of identity.”baralaye.com

Source:

Hannah Martin, February 2023

Architectural Digest https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/sculptor-ebitenyefa-baralayes-ceramic-vessels-pay-homage-to-his-ancestry

Artist Website:

http://baralaye.com/sculpture

Saturday, November 19, 2022

African American Miniature Museum, Founded by Folk Artist Karen Collins

Take a look at the work of Karen Collins. While the work does not include,

you can find inspiration for the social commentary component

of our assignment Figurative Bust Sculpture.

The artist, Karen Collins.

Folk artist Karen Collins, over the course of 24 years, has created a pictoral view of black history through dioramas placed in shadowboxes.

From the very beginning of the journey - the Middle Passage to America - up to Barack Obama and Kendrick Lamar, Karen’s miniatures bring clarity and vibrance in the telling of black history.

The museum began as a mobile project in the 90’s, when Karen took her work to schools, libraries, churches and community centers, as a way to bring both the many triumphs and the horrors of black history to a generation of children that sorely needed a sense of self and context.

See more on website.

Link below:

https://rubinmuseum.org/events/exhibitions/charged-with-buddhas-blessings

Sunday, November 6, 2022

Willy Verginer, Sculptor, Italian, b. 1957

The artist using wood and paint.

However, the work provides inspiration for the Figurative Bust Sculpture Assignment (using air dry clay). Observe how the artist uses color, incorporates objects and how the gaze/use of eyes of each subject is significant to overall meaning.

"I think colour is the most important part of my work. In art school I studied painting and not sculpting. The colour I use overwhelms my figures. It does not underline a narration, but the narration itself revolves, questions and changes with this additional visual. A tension, a conflict, as well as unity and harmony occur between colour and wood. Colour often has a symbolic value. I often use a range of colours according to the symbolism, or in connection with a specific expression, but it is not a rule; sometimes I also use a completely opposite colour (something that is counter intuitive) to surprise the viewer. (…) I don’t like when people see me as a surrealist. The surreal movement had the concept very different from what I try to achieve. However, humour and absurdity is very important for me. Both help to see the reality better. My greatest effort and my greatest research focus on not remaining fossilised on the naturalistic representation of the figure, but on giving something more. Through a dreamlike study, or better still absurd, rather than fantastic, because I often see real situations it is those that stimulate and greatly influence my work." -Willy Verginer

https://visualflood.com/post/dreamlike-figurative-wood-sculptures-that-highlight-our-social-and-environmental-issues-by-willy-verginer

More work to see on artist website:

http://www.verginer.com/

Sunday, October 16, 2022

Simone Leigh, Artist, American

Source:

https://galeriemagazine.com/guggenheim-announces-exhibition-of-new-works-by-simone-leigh/

Source:

https://entertainmentvoice.com/2016/09/17/new-york-artist-simone-leigh-takes-her-first-la-solo-show-to-hammer-museum/

Source:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjtF8VdDdHo/?hl=en

Source:

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/modern-contemporary-evening-auction-2/blue-black

Source:

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/simone-leigh-decatur-cobalt-201-c-90d4c70853

Last week, it was announced that Simone Leigh would make history at the Venice Biennale by representing the United States in 2022, making her the first Black woman ever to do the country’s pavilion at the world’s top art festival. “There’s no better artist for our time,” said Jill Medvedow, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the museum commissioning the pavilion. What makes Leigh so important right now, and why has she risen to the status of the one of the top artists working today? Below is a guide to Leigh’s art, her career, and the ideas that guide her work.

Continue reading by Alex Greenberger on Art News:

https://www.artnews.com/feature/simone-leigh-who-is-she-why-is-she-famous-1234574361/

Friday, October 7, 2022

Public Art

Confederate monuments and Mount Rushmore

are examples of social commentary in a public space.

Confederate Monuments

Credit...Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/t-magazine/most-influential-protest-art.html

An 2020 image of the late Georgia congressman and civil rights pioneer US Representative John Lewis is projected onto the pedestal of the statue of confederate General Robert E Lee, in Richmond, Virginia. The statue was removed in 2021. PICTURE: AP Photo/Steve Helber.

Mount Rushmore

Carved into the southeastern face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest are four gigantic sculptures depicting the faces of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

The 60-foot high faces were shaped from the granite rock face between 1927 and 1941, and represent one of the world’s largest pieces of sculpture, as well as one of America’s most popular tourist attractions. To many Native Americans, however, Mount Rushmore represents a desecration of lands considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux, the original residents of the Black Hills region who were displaced by white settlers and gold miners in the late 19th century.

In the Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed in 1868 by Sioux tribes and General William T. Sherman, the U.S. government promised the Sioux “undisturbed use and occupation” of territory including the Black Hills, in what is now South Dakota. But the discovery of gold in the region soon led U.S. prospectors to flock there en masse, and the U.S. government began forcing the Sioux to relinquish their claims on the Black Hills. Source: https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/mount-rushmore-1

Thread Stories, An Artist Based in Ireland

How the artist uses masks can inspire ideas

for Figurative Bust Sculpture.

"The masks deny the viewer the full story of who the sitter is, echoing the curated or false personas we view online daily. My masks are photographed against a sanitised white square. I know there is often chaos, mess and noise just beyond the margins of that photograph, but the messiness of life doesn’t make the edit for social media."

Above images and text from Colossal. See more and read about artist in link below.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/03/threadstories-masks-social-media/

Also, more to see on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/threadstories/?hl=en

Gordon Parks, American, b. 1912, d. 2006

This photograph from Gordon Parks offers ideas for Figurative Bust Sculpture Assignment. The objects, gaze of figure and garment worn visually communicate an idea. The photo is a social commentary about the inequities in America during this time period.

American Gothic by Gordon Parks

Photography, 1942

Parks created this portrait of Ella Watson, a government cleaning woman, by positioning her in front of an American Flag and placing a broom and a mop in her hands, echoing in pose as well as in title Grant Wood’s by then iconic 1930 painting of rural American resilience American Gothic. Watson worked in the building of the Farm Security Administration, a program of the New Deal whose fellowship brought Parks to Washington, DC. Parks, who would go on to become the first African American photographer at Life magazine, was taken aback by the overt racism he encountered in the nation’s capital and saw in Watson a potent critique of the country’s inequalities as well as a version of American fortitude. Source: https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/130324

American Gothic

Grant Wood, American Painter, 1891 - 1942

In American Gothic, Grant Wood directly evoked images of an earlier generation by featuring a farmer and his daughter posed stiffly and dressed as if they were, as the artist put it, “tintypes from my old family album.” They stand outside of their home, built in an 1880s style known as Carpenter Gothic. Wood had seen a similar farmhouse during a visit to Eldon, Iowa.

When it was exhibited at the Art Institute in 1930, the painting became an instant sensation, its ambiguity prompting viewers to speculate about the figures and their story. Many understood the work to be a satirical comment on midwesterners out of step with a modernizing world. Yet Wood intended it to convey a positive image of rural American values, offering a vision of reassurance at the beginning of the Great Depression. Source: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6565/american-gothic

Elizabeth Catlett, American, b. 1915, d. 2012

The most haunting quality of “Target,” a bronze sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett, may be its timelessness. The piece — in which the cross hairs of a rifle sight frame the head of an African-American man mounted on a block of wood — could date to the Civil War era, when rifle scopes entered into widespread use, or to the present day, when research shows that young Black men are far more likely to be killed by police than other Americans. Catlett, in fact, conceived the work in 1970 in response to the fatal shooting of two Black Panthers — Fred Hampton and Mark Clark — by Chicago police officers. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1915, the granddaughter of freed slaves, Catlett unflinchingly depicted the violent reality of racial injustice throughout her career, but she also portrayed civil rights leaders — Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis and Malcolm X among them — as well as the courage and resilience of everyday African-Americans, particularly women. “I have always wanted my art to service my people — to reflect us, to relate to us, to stimulate us, to make us aware of our potential,” she once said. “We have to create an art for liberation and for life.” Catlett became a Mexican citizen in 1962, but she continued to address the experience of Black people in the United States until her death in 2012. Catlett’s “Target” and the 1968 piece “Black Unity,” a raised fist carved in mahogany, are two of the most iconic and lasting artworks in the continuing movement for civil rights. — Z.L.

Image and source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/t-magazine/most-influential-protest-art.htm