Body, senses and image
My work is sourced in the felt experience of the body. My sculptures and installations use human scale, visceral shapes, sensuous materials, tactility and movement to invite people’s somatic, emotional responses. I combine materials like rawhide, cloth and rope, as well as copper, concrete and steel. Some sculptures are animated by people’s movement and touch, some by light, neon or video, and outdoors, by changing light and weather. I collaborate with dancers, filmmakers, scientists and artists to explore the interaction of the forces of body, nature and spirit.
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By Rosalyn Driscoll
Art and Visual Culture, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, September 17, 2020
The Sensing Body in the Visual Arts explores the connective, creative powers of the somatic senses in making and engaging with the visual arts. The body and the somatic senses—touch, kinesthesia, proprioception, balance, pain, temperature and emotion—underlie, support and participate in all perception. They infuse one’s experience of the arts, even visual art. This book sheds light on the usually hidden, unconscious role of the somatic senses, revealing how fundamental they are to artists’ working processes and to people’s experience of art. Becoming aware of the multiple dimensions of somatic sensitivity opens rich aesthetic, perceptual territory in art making and appreciation. In the encounter with art, the somatic senses operate in the service of meaning, enhancing the full panoply of expressive, emotive possibilities. The Sensing Body in the Visual Arts proposes a new way of making, experiencing and thinking about art—through the conscious hand and body as well as eye and mind.
