 
Some of us who are artists and beginning to get "up in years" so to speak, may be starting to think in terms of our "life's work" and if we'll ever come to a point where we'll be "known" to some degree, revered, collected, or able to live comfortably only from our art. Those who sometimes ponder such things,
can all take heart from this lady. She was born exactly one hundred years ago in Kiev, Russia. As a child, her family moved to the great state of Maine where at the tender age of nine she proclaimed her desire to become a sculptor. Now, fast-forward thirty-five years to 1943. She has her first exhibition as an artist. Add to that another TWENTY years. She's sixty-four before she's able to support herself from her art. In between is a lot of studying (both at home and abroad), relying on the goodness of her family, and even selling her jewelry to have money to live on. Her name was Louise Nevelson.
Art critics and historians love superlatives. It gives credence to what they
write about. Louise Nevelson has been crowned by those who bestow such
blessings, as "the most celebrated female sculptor in the history of American
modernism." It sounds good though some might find a few too many qualifiers
in such a distinction. Let's just say she's the most outstanding female
sculptor of this century...well...really, the last century too! Gee, there
haven't actually BEEN all that many female sculptors, has there? Off the top
of my head, I can't even think of ONE...certainly none that comes close to
the distinctively, quiet, complex beauty that marks Nevelson's
signature work. The mere mention of her name conjures up images of large,
darkly-painted grids of ingeniously composed wooden collages. Whether using found shapes or machine-crafted spindles and knobs, her work is endlessly fascinating and quietly pleasant to contemplate. There is an orderliness overlain with an excitement akin to opening presents on Christmas morning.
Just such an installation can be seen in her "Rain Garden II" seen above. Assembled from hundreds of "found" pieces of castaway wood, combined with dozens of spindles, knobs, and dowels, Nevelson has organized them into twenty-two slender, box-like frames which in turn have been amassed into a single unit. Painted a simple, flat black, the effect is to create a sort of wall-like grouping in which the viewer can dwell on individual shapes, explore individual units, or marvel at the over all texture and harmonious "feel" of the whole work.
One of the things that sets Nevelson apart from many other artists of all
stripes is that she does not observe any hierarchy of mediums. At a time
when other sculptors were welding steel, she was "sawing logs." Which is not to say that she eschews the monumental. Her 1983 "Dawn Shadows," located in Chicago's Madison Plaza, not far from similar works by the likes of Picasso, Calder, and Miro (click the photo above), both dwarfs onlookers and is in fact, made of welded steel (she came to steel late in life). Materials of all kinds show up in her work from wood, paper, and cloth to Plexiglas, lead, and bronze. Her lack of preference for one sculpture medium over another allows her an incredible range of creative possibilities, either in terms of MIXING or MATCHING.
Another distinction regarding her work is its potential for interchangeability. Her hallmark environmental sculptures of the 1950s had designed into them the capability for their being rearranged, often in nearly endless combinations making them dynamic, not in the sense of a Calder mobile, but as evolving entities driven either by the artist or the owner. Beyond her work though, I can't help thinking of Louise Nevelson as an excellent role model for artists--study endlessly, persevere always, work perpetually, and wait patiently. Time has a way of recognizing talent and integrity. Tutorials | Forums | Membership | Contact
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Jim Lane
is fifty-ish, balding, bearded, bespectacled, professorial, outgoing, knowledgable about a lot of things, expert on a very few. He grew up in the small town of Stockport, situated on the Muskingum River in Southeastern Ohio. He graduated from a un-noteworthy business college in Cincinnati, from the U.S. Air Force, and from Ohio University where he also obtained a masters degree and wracked up several hours of post-graduate work as well. For most of his professional life he's run a portrait business out of his home, specializing in sports portraits done in pencil and colored pencil.