Create > Unnatural Landscape

Create > Unnatural Landscape

Goal:  Creating a surrealistic landscape in a box or frame.

Catalysts:  Analogy, Transfer, Fantasize, Metaphor.

Studio Activity:  

1. Research and view works by Louis Nevelson.
2. Start with an old picture frame or make one.
3. Visualize a landscape.  
4. Integrate 3-D forms such as found objects, carved or cut, modeled, or painted forms, within the space of the frame.  
5. Assemble pieces of cut wood with pieces of foundobjects.      
6. Build in compartments or shelves if you wish.  
7. Develop a wall mountable relief using all the pieces.  
8. Paint the relief with one color.  
9. Vary the process as needed.

Assemblage is an artistic process in which a three-dimensional artistic composition is made from putting together found objects.

Louise Nevelson is known for her assemblages of abstract expressionist “boxes” grouped together to form a new creation. Nevelson’s sculpture makes an art of the cast-off; they teem with objects we identify: toilet seats, chair backs, table legs, crates, barrel lids, wooden spools, blocks, table leaves, arabesque ornamentation, even coasters.  

The daughter of a woodcutter and a junk-dealer, Nevelson gives intense care to geometric precision in her work. She melds blocks of found wood into precise constructions, then colors them monochromatically; black, white, or gold. The sculptures are three-dimensional catalogs of lines and shapes, taxonomies of craft that seem almost to rise up like skylines of great cities.

”When you put together things that other people have thrown out, you’re really bringing them to life – a spiritual life that surpasses the life for which they were originally created."