Saturday, December 3, 2022

Evolution of a Sculpture by Joan Diamond

 Working with a photographer can be a frustrating experience for me.  I've put all the effort and momentum into the actual making, and more thinking is required when dealing with a photographer, at least, when it comes to photographing a sculpture.  The photographer understands better than I what the camera sees, or can translate.  This is the surprising story of a piece I had photographed ... (gulp) ... three times.

I had worked for months on the dyeing techniques of this piece, called "Before".  Sidestepping logistics with mounting shaped this piece. An innocent comment early on began a cascade of rethinking.  "No gallery will put 12 holes in their walls to mount a piece from one artist" I was told.  I already had a carpenter cut wooden blocks, each with carved out spots for powerful magnets.  I had completed 3 of the "pods" with appropriately sewn in magnets to mount as initially conceived when the comment came.  Ouch.  So, no more individual wall mounted pods. Well the benefit of being liberated from the wall-as-anchor was that now the "pods" inherited a "back". They were re-designed to be in space.  "Not all galleries can offer a ceiling mount."  Oh dear.  I worked on different solutions, finally arriving at using an oval panel bolted to 2 wall mounted brackets (and from which the pods hang). 


 Oh no!  Wind chimes.  My pods look like wind chimes.  You would never know each of these are about 4 foot in length.  Worse, in a photo taken with the "visual anchor" of a "rug", the pods hung equidistant from rug and from oval, exaggerating a wind-chime effect.  Ugh.  Another photoshoot (gulp-another photo payment equal to the first) was needed.

So here is the visual anchor, the "rug".  The gray background seems so much nicer than the white:  makes the gold rims glow.  And pods are hanging lower to the "rug", relating to it better.  However, something feels wrong though.  It's all so ... constrained.  

I dragged my poor art critique group through weeks (and weeks) of torture contemplating the making of the oval, done by weaving strips of rust and tea stained fabric through perforations, and the "rug"  with hours and hours of work in its construction and thoughts about its color.  Now, both these supposed assets were not helping.  The pods seemed desperate for air.  

It took me several months to get comfortable with again spending another big chunk of change to photograph the same piece.  A third time?  Is this rational? (gulp) I tried someone new.  This time ahead of the shoot I sent him the artist statement and a couple of photos from Pinterest of other installation work so he could understand more the kind of space I was looking for.  Happy to say: the saga is over.  I think I can put this one to rest now.  Done.  Sigh of relief!!

1 comment:

Barbara J. Schneider said...

Hi Joan, I followed this up to the last photo. what is now below each pod and how is it being supported???? Its very cool but I don't understand how you actually solved your problem!