In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

203 18 EARTHBOUND MYSTERY Ursula von Rydingsvard Born in 1942 in Deensen, Germany, Ursula von Rydingsvard builds cedar sculptures that range from small works, reminiscent of tools or domestic objects, to large-scale walls and environmental installations. Ursula von Rydingsvard’s heavily carved wooden sculptures are imbued with a strong sense of human identity and a memory of the land itself. The layering effect seen in her largest works suggests a sequencing or natural process we might associate with the passage of time. In 2001 von Rydingsvard installed a new large commission at the Queens County Court House in New York. During the summer of 2001 her large outdoor sculpture ence pence, was exhibited at the DeCordova Museum in Massachusetts. Her outdoor sculpture has been exhibited at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Koln Skulptur Park in Cologne, Germany, and in Central Park, New York City. The siting of works and use of earthbound materials make von Rydingsvard ’s sculptures most interesting for they establish a rapport between nature’s history and human history. Memories of farm life and agararian roots in Poland, of survival in German refugee camps, and of simple wooden churches, implements, and dwellings, establish an unusual rapport between the primary materials derived from nature and the social and cultural history of her own family heritage. Sensitivity to site likewise plays a role in Ursula von Rydingsvard ’s sculpture, as does the use and history of language. JG There is an uncertainty in your work. You take shapes, put things together, reassemble and carve the forms, but they remain tentative. It is as if you believe there is an inherent ambiguity in the structures themselves. The wood and materials you use have a structure of their own, and you recombine them in a kind of additive process. UvR That’s right. The material—and this is so important—doesn’t even look natural. The cedar gets cut into long beams 4 inches × 4 inches wide. I feel that Earthbound Mystery 204 this is a neutral form. . . . I therefore don’t have to respect it too much. I can take control of it. JG A standardized form you are working with and bringing it into a natural or archaic configuration. . . . Many of your pieces have a gray chromatic finish that achieves a kind of unified surface effect. You talked about wearing gray clothes as a child and never being able to forget this. Does the gray surface color allude to these childhood memories? Do you get a sense of security from it? There is also a kind of joy and muted exuberance that surfaces in the way you bring these materials and forms to life. The result is a unique and complex kind of art that asks questions and doesn’t provide the answers. UvR That’s right. And I always try to be even more questioning because I don’t want to arrive at any conclusion. There really is no such thing. The piece I am presently working on is another little letter. I am fooling around with it but have no idea where it is going to go. JG You call these works letters? UvR Yes. This one is actually the letter M, or at least it started as the letter M. It’s bottomless, as if I wanted the lace to be deep. In fact it is no longer lace, but something else. It is like a series of layers or strata. Some of them you cannot see. They are hidden and occluded, all texture and surface. JG Do you like working with wood? UvR Wood is my way of speaking. I can communicate through it. It is good to me when I use it right. Sometimes it drives me nuts. I am wise and mischievous about the way I mobilize it, but I have also been lazy with it. I have had all kind of relationships with it. It feels really familiar. You see I come from many generations of Polish farmers whose lives were surrounded by wood—their homes, domestic objects within these homes, as well as farming implements. JG Are you echoing those agricultural links to the land? Paul’s Shovel (1987), Large Bowl with Scoops (1999), or Comb with Inlays (2000), for instance, like many of your works have a folklorish aura to them. Maybe it is not a nostalgia about the land, but more an identification and reclamation of that identity...

Share