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| Chad Holliday |
| This new work is about obtaining the essence of beauty through the simplification of form. In the past I have worked with figurative elements and those forms that relate or are derivative of the human form. I’ve thought of this as an organic approach to shape, proportion, and form. Now I am working from the opposite end of the spectrum. I am trying to understand these relationships utilizing geometry. I am discovering the natural beauty of the world by using geometric formulas and combining them with shapes that incorporate similar elements to the human form and forms I am finding in architecture here in Europe from hundreds of years ago. I have known for a while how African tribes have incorporated geometric forms with human components. The Egyptians were also quite exceptional at doing this as well. I am specifically interested in some funerary sculpture from the tribes of north-central Africa. So, from a historical point I am going back to understand the use of these elements and how they were working visually. Since I have come to Europe, specifically the Czech Republic, I have witnessed how powerful the cathedrals and the architecture of the past is. These inspirational constructions primarily from, but not limited to, the Gothic Period, seem to reach toward the heavens. Even some of the small works have a monumental quality to them. These examples of inspiration have commonalities that I wish to explore. They all seem to have specific cultural importance. They are important symbols of the quest to understand the natural world. They are all monumental even when the size of the construction is small. There is also a sense of the individual person having a relationship with it whether it is religious or the presence of it in daily life. I am beginning to explore the sensitivity that humans have with certain shapes. The circle, whether is be whole, divided or reassembled has a message of some cycle. It represents the earth, the heavens, life, relationships (especially between partners), conversation, education, etc. I think it leads to more feelings and meaning beyond these few examples. By utilizing a divided circle, at first, I hope to understand some of these meanings. I am dividing and reassembling the circle to describe relationships and depict unity. I have recently read some information about beauty and how the human experiences, develops and becomes able to critique such things. Philosophers and psychoanalysts have been trying to understand these phenomena of the human mind for hundreds of years. According to Carl Jung, the human has three parts of the psyche. Each part deals with beauty in a different manner. There is the individual conscious, sub-conscious and the collective conscious. At this moment I am interested in the collective conscious. The collective conscious is where we have developed a sense of beauty through evolution. This being the case, we should all have some common sense of form and be attracted to these same forms and element of these forms. I presume that these shapes and forms I am using are found in this collective library. "If the significance (spirit) of form is lacking, creative art can be nothing of or for the soul. Only where this significance is the aura of form does the spirit enter into man-made things. Art." Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959), American architect, The Living City, 1958. I have decided to utilize these influences. Some of these new sculptures are derivative of these ideas and formal attributes of these physical examples among others. My intention is to continue to elaborate on these concepts and use them as a foundation to explore the harmony of composition through simplified forms. |
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