Three Faces of Eden

Story & Photos by Carolee Ross
Note: This story was first published in The Westport News, Westport, Connecticut

 

Chiron the Centaur
by Hans Wilhelm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art must have begun in a garden, redolent of dew and drenched in sun and shadow. Nurtured by the beauty of nature’s bounty, the first artists fashioned their own visions of splendor.

Indeed, modern archeology has confirmed that from the first light of dawn, beautifying one’s environment has been prevalent among civilizations across the span of time and continents. In the dawn of the 21^st century, the garden, where the outdoors becomes an extension of personal style, has become a showcase for the individualism of three renowned Connecticut artists.

 

 

 From the whimsical and the sensual, to the capricious and the monumental, the works of Hans Wilhelm, Niki Ketchman and Harvey Weiss reflect the diverse concerns of the contemporary art scene.

Hans Wilhelm’s Muses Capture Spring

            In the desolation of a gray Connecticut winter, Hans Wilhelm longed for color and light. The famous author and illustrator of children’s books just didn’t do New England winters well after years of traveling through exotic locals and living in the lush, Eden-like climate of Africa.

            “I needed to look outside and see joy and light,” Wilhelm said during a recent interview at his Weston studio. “Even Beethoven at his darkest, still reminded us of the light.”

            So the artist, steeped in mythology and folklore, set about fashioning reflections of the muses that embodied his love of literature, music and art. The result – a mythological sculpture garden, brimming with fantastic creatures that inhabit the landscape with reckless abandon and joie de vivre. He spent hours painstakingly sketching the figures he would later fashion from large sheets of flat, durable metal, and paint with radiant hues.

Daphne
by Hans Wilhelm

            The cast of sculptural characters in Wilhelm’s garden prance across a tree-filled expanse. Chiron, the mythological centaur (half man, half horse) who was legendary tutor to Greek heroes Achilles, Jason and Asclepius, rears his front hooves in delight as he strums his harp. Chiron’s curvilinear forms vibrate with brilliant golds and oranges as he perches atop a cloud-painted pedestal that Wilhelm can view from a sitting room window.

            “Each time I look outside, Chiron’s exuberance delights me,” said Wilhelm, “even in the darkest days of winter.”

           

             Three Muses of poetry, music and dance seem to move in sheer abandonment in a rolling corner of the garden, taking their vibrant colors from the flowers that surround them in summer. They are depicted as they were in ancient times, entertaining gods and goddesses. Nearby, the lovely Daphne’s arms stretch to the sky as she is transformed into a laurel tree, her punishment for fleeing from the advances of the love-smitten god, Apollo.

            A few yards away, a blue and white Pan, adorned with the cutout shapes of birds and soft white clouds, plays his pipes as a tiny bluebird perches at his feet. Atop a rocky knoll, a majestic Moon Stag with stars across his chest and a sea creature’s tail, presides over his enchanted domain, reveling in the rolling countryside. Enchantment and wonder are everywhere.

Pan
by
Hans Wilhelm

Visit Hans Wilhelm’s Web site (www.hanswilhelm.com) for more information about the artist, his publications and his art.

 

Niki Ketchman Weaves Biomorphic Magic

Cassiopeia
by
Nikki Ketchman

            When art moved beyond the Middle Ages, a new mystique was born, distinguishing the fine arts from crafts. Artists who worked with fiber, fabric and related materials were banished to the lowest echelon of the art hierarchy. Any form considered decorative was dismissed as inconsequential and even worse: derisively termed feminine, it was often labeled “women’s work.”

            Then, in the 1970’s, the women’s movement hit the art world with a resounding jolt. Artists of both sexes conditioned to denigrate any form that suggested women’s work now embraced these forms.

            Artist Niki Ketchman took this one step further, adding her own mixture of fun and funkiness to monumental art. Ketchman, whose works have been celebrated in galleries, museums and private collections throughout the country, becomes part sorceress, part alchemist, as she mixes humor, whimsy and surrealism to create a sassy synthesis of technology and organic form.

            Ketchman uses industrial materials such as chicken wire, steel rods PVC plastic and aluminum wire to create her sensual, yet humorous images. The forms grew out of sketches of shapes that she made while commuting on the train to her Brooklyn, New York studio, and the desire to turn the wiry lines into three-dimensional forms. Imitating the ink line first led her to string, then to wire. She began working with pliers, which became an extension of her hand.

            “When it occurred to me that I could weave the line instead of draw it, it led to other surfaces,” said Ketchman. “I started braiding it, adding flowers and stars, and it opened up a whole new world.”

            “Cassiopeia” stands like a sentinel, shape-shifting before the viewers’ eyes. At once the dome of the universe, bedecked with stamped-metal blue stars and beribboned with a foundation of trees, it suddenly transmigrates into the headdress of an African queen, proud and strong. “Split,” a sculpture that took center stage at Ketchman’s DeCordova Museum exhibition in Massachusetts last year, is a cross between a witch’s hat and a chieftain’s headdress, as it stands amidst a clump of trees, both elegant and mysterious. “Primal Fugue: Aged” began as part of a series as the artist explored how far she could push the cylindrical form. “Transformation,” a huge globe of woven media that is half black, half silver, personifies Ketchman’s well-known and easily recognized “nervous line” format. The globular mass of super-charged wires seems to secretly move as the viewer glances away. These pieces were included in Ketchman’s shows at the Knoxville Museum of Art in Knoxville, Tennessee and the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut.

            For more information on Niki Ketchman’s art, visit: http://www.artincontext.org/artist/k/niki_ketchman/.

Gorillas in the Mist: The Art of Harvey Weiss

Welcoming Gorilla
by
Harvey Weiss

            A small, trumpet-playing terra cotta gorilla stands on one of the entrance pillars to Harvey Weiss’ Green Farms studio and naturalistic garden, welcoming friend or foe. On the other pillar, a Don Quixote-like form riding a dragon guards against suspicious art critics. A few yards away, a turreted, miniature castle presides over lilies, tulips and rambling vines and an unfinished “Circus Troupe en Route” wends its way among a clump of bonsai trees.

            It is a Mad Hatter’s tea party, a study in masses and voids, the majestic and the capricious, and a zany journey into the mind of a unique sculptor. Weiss, who said he has been sculpting for as long as he can remember, has worked with different materials, all with different objectives. The

Cubist-Constructivist tradition seems to have been the most influential in the massive welded brass piece, “Landmark,” where small figures seem trapped between massive rectangular shapes, and in “Landscape,” where the glint of recently-fallen rain illuminates the planar forms.

            The mingling of nature and art brings to mind the words of my teacher and mentor, Dr. Robert Myron, artist, art historian and professor of art history: “When art is in its truest, purest form,” he would say, “it should touch you, move you, enlighten you and change your perceptions. Every piece of art should resonate to something deep inside you. Each time you see a piece of art in which the artist has been authentic, expressing a heartfelt reaction to life within this Universe of ours, you will see an old friend and a new experience.”

 

Harvey Weiss has taught at Adelphi University and is a member of Silvermine Art Guild in Silvermine, Connecticut.

Blocks
by
Harvey Weiss