The Inside Out Series…
beyond the surface skin of being….
Prairie Grandchild
Based on vulnerability and seeking physical protection as my Homesteader Grandfather might have wished for. The roof is 3/4” thick and has a pinhole analog projection of the sky on the floor. Being contained and yet getting to feel free from vulnerability is an experience worth wanting, and worth wanting reflection on.
Inside Elevation : to squeeze oneself inside of any kind of structure or to squeeze one’s self inside of an existing orthodoxy is an experience. The physical experience offers shelter and a place of non-denominational spiritual contemplation that we all need regardless of beliefs or faith system…and quite hopefully… the release back outside offers renewal and a heightened sense of expansiveness.
“Inside Elevation” belongs to “Grounds for Sculpture” at Hamilton New Jerzy south of New York City.
“Inside a Dissonant Society” belongs to : Alberta Foundation for the Arts, it is home at the University of Lethbridge. Some buildings offering spiritual contemplation have spires that reach towards the heavens and can be seems from Miles away and from everywhere you go in the region. This one comically goes limp or perhaps readies to cast a perfume of intoxicating allure. The interior features two bells that are half a tone different from each other and when rung, the vibrating dissonant sound waves fill the space and fill one’s consciousness. As the sound subsides, introspection gives way to quieter sounds from outside and one becomes awakened again to the prospects and vulnerabilities in the real world outside of the skin of the sculpture. Outside of our bodily skin the real world is a place to feel vulnerable. What we carry within us is worth contemplating and considering. Can a sculpture be that kind of body too? Can a place have a surface that makes us feel something deeper is worth getting to know? Maybe we all need places to go and to feel free to think and feel regardless of our family’s traditional faith system or denomination?
“Onisama”. (Honourable older Brother in Japanese)
we may have mysterious guardians in our lives who would protect us and shelter us and yet beneath their skin complex locked rooms, secrets, scars, all make them who they are. Over the years they may stand steady and ready to protect us if even ominously and merely by being present. This is how my older siblings seemed to me. And if they let us in, the chamber access is but one experience. The intensity of the climb to the upper chamber and the view out is an entirely new and self altering perspective. Narrow, intense and focussed is this view in Onisama.
collection of the city of Red Deer Canada
“Sean’s Introspection”.
the interior of this sculpture is locked but controlled access is curated by renown artist Sean Caulfield. I offered this to my favourite living artist to use as he wishes for the rest of his life. Safe there, he can mediate, witness, work or suspend contact from within, or he could invite guests and make available installations that change or perhaps build to a culmination in his old age.
what is he building in there?
“Blair’s Introspection “. Renown artist Blair Brennan curates and controls the locked access to what is going on within the skin of this sculpture. First shown in Borden Park Edmonton for three years.
Royden Mills: Sculpture Concerning Physical Perception of What is Inside Verses What is Outside.
Almost Whole : Belgravia Sculpture Park Edmonton
Umi Na Shizuka; Pulaski Technical College Little Rock Arkansas
