MAD Again

The Museum of Art and Design on Columbus Circle in NYC can be counted on to have mind expanding things to see and people to learn about. This past visit, three of the special exhibitions touched me deeply.

COILLE  HOOVEN

First were the weird figurative sculptures by Coille Hooven. She works in porcelain and rarely uses colored glazes so the pieces are overall white. Many small and medium sculptures and vessels of a non-utilitarian nature populated the space, mainly depicting animals and unclothed females. The figures were transformed in some way or in settings that were alternately dream-like or nightmarish in feeling.

Symbolism is everywhere in her work, and in the informative texts that MAD always features as part of their exhibits, one can learn that the vessel can be a symbol for the soul, the moon a symbol for transformation, and a shoe a symbol for a metaphysical journey.






Coille Hooven was born in 1939, a month after her great-aunt, M. Louise McLaughlin, the studio potter who pioneered underglaze and china painting techniques in America. Hooven believes she is guided by her great-aunt's spirit, and if that is true, the guidance has been an effective one. Hooven too, has been "a maverick, " developing her own artistic vision while working in academia and alongside some of the country's most famous ceramicists (Voulkos, Arneson) during her long career.

MARGARET AND CHRISTINE WERTHEIM

Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS is an amazing, colorful and important exhibit. The two artists, sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim, and their organization the Institute of Figuring, collaborated on huge sculptures based on the form of coral and reef flora and fauna.

At the entrance to the exhibit is an enormous net filled with plastic (left) that the sisters had collected. They had done an experiment, saving all their plastic disposables for one month, and were shocked at the amount they amassed.














A wall-length blackboard presents a timeline of CO2 levels in the atmosphere over time and the history of plastic, with its development dates and production figures.




















Crochet is the preferred technique here, using audio and video tape, plastic bags, plastic netting, plastic toys, and other plastic trash, with more traditional crochet yarns to construct the sculptures based on real sea creatures.

Pod World - Wire and Beaded, beaded wired
sea creature by Sarah Simons,
knitted wire sea creature by Anita Bruce

Besides the Wertheim sisters, other craftsmen/artists contributed smaller and often exquisite works to the exhibit, such as the installation on the left.

I was informed, alarmed and awed by the exhibit. It accomplished communicating an important message that I can only hope becomes widespread.

HARRY BERTOIA

Still from a film about Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures

I was not prepared to be awed further that day, but that is what happened in the next exhibit on the floor below the Crochet Coral Reef.

Harry Bertoia became known for his wire furniture, but he was so much more than a furniture designer. He created jewelry, prints, musical instruments and sound recordings of incredible inventiveness. He was also, it seems to me, a man with deep insights.

Bertoia created a collection of sound producing sculptures with metal rods and wires that made sounds as they struck together. He called the sculptures collectively "Sonambient," and he made hundreds of recordings of his compositions (or were they improvisations?) on reel to reel tape.

The MAD makes their exhibit available to patrons to try their assemblage of sound sculptures at select times. I could only listen on headphones to recordings when I was there, and heard an otherworldly sound, rich in tonal layering. The stone barn in Pennsylvania where his Sonambient was set up is apparently still there, and can be visited.

Bertoia's Studio

The prints and the simple linear designs of his wire jewelry were difficult to photograph and don't show to their advantage here, but were exciting for me to discover.

Some prints were displayed with jewelry in the museum's cases.

Harry Beroia is buried on his property in Pennsylvania under a 10-foot diameter gong, his largest sculpture. Seeing his art, hearing his recordings and reading about his life and work, I gained an impression of a man who developed and grew in his understanding, to the very end. In his words, his life was...

 "An immersion into the vast recesses of the unconscious leading to the realization that the inner world is as immense as the cosmos outside...

Awareness of life is the purpose of life..."