Research:
Kara Walker:
- Kara Walker is an artist who uses mostly race, gender, and sexuality in her art through silhouetted figures.
- She is best known for her cut-paper silhouettes which are usually black figures up against a white wall. These are addressing the history of American slavery and racism through some violent imagery.
- Her work also includes art in gouache, watercolor, video animation, shadow puppets, “magic-lantern” projections, and large-scale sculptural installations. One of her popular large sculptures is called A Subtlety.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Walker
A Subtlety:
- It is also known as the Marvelous Sugar Baby.
- This work is by the well-known artist, Kara Walker.
- The sculpture is of a sugar-coated sphinx like woman. There are also smaller figures all around that were cast in sugar and molasses-coated resin.
- Subtlety means the quality or state of being subtle.
- “The Domino Sugar Factory is doing a large part of the work. I wanted to make a piece that would complement it, echo it, and hopefully contain these assorted meanings about imperialism, about slavery, about the slave trade that traded sugar for bodies and bodies for sugar.”
- https://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/
- https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/creative-time-presents-kara-walker%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Ca-subtlety%E2%80%9D-creative-time/wROXs_Vy?hl=en
James Hampton:
- James Hampton was an artist who worked as a janitor and would secretly build large art pieces from scavenged materials. His pieces were mostly religious art.
- The material he would use included things like old furniture, light bulbs, shards of mirror, and they are all held together with tacks, glue, pins and tape. He was self-taught.
- The story of him finally became public in 1964 and his artwork was donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1970 where it is still being displayed.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hampton_(artist)
Lynda Benglis
- She is an American sculptor who is known for her wax paintings and poured latex sculptures. Her early work used things like beeswax before using polyurethane and then moved to gold-leaf, zinc, and aluminum.
- Many of her works dealt with feminism. The structures played an important role in addressing questions about female identity in relation to art.
- One of her pieces that I found interesting was called, Baby Planet. It is one of her poured latex pieces that looks like a puddle on the floor of many colors. It looks very interesting and caught my attention.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynda_Benglis
Jeff Koons
- He is an American artist known for work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects. Some critics view his work as major art- historical importance and others see it as being based on cynical self-merchandising.
- He created sculptures out of inflatable toys. His most famous one was called Rabbit, in which it was a inflatable rabbit casted in highly polished stainless steel.
- One of his famous series was called Celebration. It consisted of many paintings and sculptures of balloon dogs, Valentine’s hearts, diamonds, and Easter eggs. This series is very fun and unique.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Koons
Letha Wilson
- She is an American artist who works in photography and sculpture. She often combines large-scale landscape photographs with sculptural elements of metal and concrete. This challenges the two-dimensional nature of photography.
- She is influenced by the landscape of the American West and by the land artists of the 1960s and 1970s.
- Her work is very interesting to look at and it mostly focuses on landscapes and calming skies. Her work is both sculpture and photography together.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letha_Wilson
- https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-20-female-artists-pushing-sculpture-forward
