| Author | Message | ||
| adriaan
Moderator Username: adriaan Post Number: 2452 Registered: 6-2002 |
I'm moving several posts out of this Wishing & Wanted thread to this new thread, to keep the other thread on topic. It also improves other people's chances to run into this fine art discussion. | ||
| edwin
Senior Member Username: edwin Post Number: 563 Registered: 5-2002 |
What you say about art is true. Bass making at this level is even pretty quick for art. It took my mom 10 years to make this, Which is not that long considering how long some art takes.  | ||
| sonicus
Senior Member Username: sonicus Post Number: 814 Registered: 5-2009 |
Edwin , What an Awesome sculpture! is that in stone or bronze ?or ? it is beautiful work. The proportions look perfect in the photo. How tall is the figure ? | ||
| edwin
Senior Member Username: edwin Post Number: 564 Registered: 5-2002 |
The figure is bronze, made originally in terra cotta, and about 15'. It is in Riverside Park in New York. It's the first public statue of a first lady in the country. More shots here: http://www.penelopejencks.com/Pages/pubcom.html On a more musical note, she's working on sculptures of Leonard Bernstein, Serge Koussevitsky and Aaron Copland these days. No telling how many years this one will take. [removed some comments relevant only to the original thread - Adriaan] (Message edited by adriaan on April 02, 2010) | ||
| adriaan
Moderator Username: adriaan Post Number: 2449 Registered: 6-2002 |
I would love to see your mother do a statue of Charles Ives. I'm usually not into sculptures (more of a paintings and drawings person) but I'm truly impressed. | ||
| edwin
Senior Member Username: edwin Post Number: 565 Registered: 5-2002 |
Well, for my mom, these are all the equivalent of being in a cover band, as they are all commissions. I don't think that, left to her own devices, this would be her subject matter. Although, Eleanor Roosevelt I think was partially a labor of love. So, if someone offered her the proper incentives, Ives might be doable, although at 74, I'm not sure how many more large commissions she will do. On the intersection of music and art, my mom's father was a contemporary of Copland in the music world, although a composer of a very different style; his harmonic structures were post 12 tone and his compositions were some of the most rhythmically complex I've ever seen; he wrote out all his music paper in alternating bars of 3 and 4 and then proceeded to completely ignore the bar lines. Listening to the music, it just flows, like a stream of consciousness conversation. Coincidentally, he also lived for most of the 60s about 6 blocks away from the Roosevelt monument at the Dakota. The rest of my family are artists as well. My dad is a print maker (and was chairman of Visual Arts at Boston University) and my brother is a painter (www.adamhurwitz.com- warning! there are some images there that are a little challenging) and my wife trained as a painter, including with my dad at BU, and discovered that blending colors translated to blending smells, so she now designs perfume (www.artscent.com) although she does still paint. I'm hoping she'll get a painting website together one of these days. Finally, my mom's brother is an architect who most architects will recognize-Charles Jencks (www.charlesjencks.com), who has written some seminal academic volumes and done some very interesting work including the Garden of Cosmic Speculation (which was the inspiration of a symphony of the same name, bringing it full circle back to music!). I was named after Edwin Dickinson, an early 20th century painter who was a friend of my grandparents and an early mentor of my mom. So, that's my family, although there are some other interesting characters there as well: my mom's grandfather, Raymond Pearl, was a drinking buddy of HL Mencken (and the first person to statistically analyze the effect of alcohol on longevity, determining that moderate drinking increases your life and generally created the field of biostatistics), her aunt was a very eccentric and brilliant woman, who was a psychiatrist in New York and married to Leon Russianoff, a premier clarinet teacher, but also who played the drums and kept getting solicited to do punk gigs at CBGBs in the 70s and 80s. Anyway, thanks for moving the thread, Adriaan, I was concerned about thread hijacking! | ||
| adriaan
Moderator Username: adriaan Post Number: 2454 Registered: 6-2002 |
Searching on Jencks, I've found this piece on one of your uncles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jencks - any links to works by your grandfather, Gardner Jencks? | ||
| edwin
Senior Member Username: edwin Post Number: 566 Registered: 5-2002 |
Well, for my mom, these are all the equivalent of being in a cover band, as they are all commissions. I doubt that, left to her own devices, this would be her subject matter. Although, Eleanor Roosevelt I think was also a labor of love. So, if someone offered her the proper incentives, Ives might be doable, although at 74, I'm not sure how many more large commissions she will do. On the intersection of music and art, my mom's father was a contemporary of Copland in the music world, although a composer of a very different style; his harmonic structures were post 12 tone and his compositions were some of the most rhythmically complex I've ever seen; he wrote out all his music paper in alternating bars of 3 and 4 and then proceeded to completely ignore the bar lines. Listening to the music, it just flows, like a stream of consciousness conversation. Coincidentally, he also lived for most of the 60s about 6 blocks away from the Roosevelt monument at the Dakota. The rest of my family are artists as well. My dad is a print maker (and was chairman of Visual Arts at Boston University- no website yet) and my brother is a painter (www.adamhurwitz.com warning! there are some images there that are a little challenging) and my wife trained as a painter, including with my dad at BU, and discovered that blending colors translated to blending smells, so she now designs perfume (www.artscent.com) although she does still paint. I'm hoping she'll get a painting website together one of these days. Finally, my mom's brother is an architect who most architects will recognize-Charles Jencks (www.charlesjencks.com), who has written some seminal academic volumes and done some very interesting work including the Garden of Cosmic Speculation (which was the inspiration of a symphony of the same name, bringing it full circle back to music!). I was named after Edwin Dickinson, an early 20th century painter who was a friend of my grandparents and an early mentor of my mom. So, that's my family, although there are some other interesting characters there as well: my mom's grandfather, Raymond Pearl, was a drinking and jamming buddy of HL Mencken (and the first person to statistically analyze the effect of alcohol on longevity, determining that moderate drinking increases your life and generally created the field of biostatistics-http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0406web/pearl.html), her aunt was a very eccentric and brilliant woman, who was a psychiatrist in New York and married to Leon Russianoff, a premier clarinet teacher, but also who played the drums and kept getting solicited to do punk gigs at CBGBs in the 70s and 80s. I don't think she ever did do it, though. I'd also like to point out the importance of art in Alembic history, from Susan W. herself, to Bob Thomas, to Jerry Garcia (an aspiring artist before music took over) and on and on. Although I can barely write my own name, I have a profound respect for visual art. In the last 15 years I have studied photography so I could at least understand the vocabulary of composition, value, etc. Anyway, thanks for moving the thread, Adriaan, I was concerned about hijacking! (Message edited by edwin on April 02, 2010) (Message edited by edwin on April 02, 2010) | ||
| artswork99
Moderator Username: artswork99 Post Number: 1059 Registered: 7-2007 |
Edwin, Beautiful history! And quite interesting too. Thanks for sharing. Art ps: your brothers site link has a hypen at the end taking it to a "not found". remove the hyphen and all is well ;) | ||
| edwin
Senior Member Username: edwin Post Number: 567 Registered: 5-2002 |
Fixed, thanks Art! | ||
| davehouck
Moderator Username: davehouck Post Number: 9214 Registered: 5-2002 |
Fascinating story Edwin; thanks for sharing! |
