Moment of Anxiety

There is a moment of anxiety when I place a finished piece on the wall and see it for the first time as it should be shown. I've never known a piece to live up to my expectations as I stand back (perhaps because delusions of grandeur are the only thing that can keep me motivated to finish it) but I at least hope that I'm not disappointed. No matter how I look at a sculpture or painting while I'm working on it, how many times I hang it, arrange the individual pieces or place them together, the final hanging is always different and a surprise.

Five Wedges
(Update 2/4/11: I changed the name of this piece to
Green Chimneys)
shellac on curly maple and cherry
49" x 20" x 4"

With this one I am less disappointed than most, which I have to accept as total success.

I think it is very musical. The colors have a rhythm as you look from the right or left sides, which I wasn't expecting as much as I had planned for the wedge shapes and placement to be rhythmic. Initially, I thought viewing from the right was better, with the yellow on each piece, but now, looking from the left and seeing the red/yellow pattern, I can't choose.
I've been listening to a lot of jazz as I work and would like to think that this sculpture is influenced by Thelonious Monk. I find it amazing how the notes he plays are simultaneously completely wrong and completely perfect. I think my only disappointment in this piece is in not seeing a similar quality, something needed to be more wrong and unexpected but I'm not sure what.

close-up (right)

From the fine art world though, it is influenced by Anne Truitt. After seeing her work on-line, I wanted to play around with making 3-D pieces that were colored differently on each side. I also like how she makes paintings of minimalist 3-D forms. I debated for months whether to make this a wall piece or something for a pedestal but could never think of a good way to display them on a pedestal so I went for the wall.

close-up (left)

I also struggled for months on cutting the wedges. They might look simple but my only hope of cutting the faces with clean lines and without tear-out (because of the intense figure) was to improve my skills with handplanes. Thankfully, Garrett Hack gave a workshop on using hand tools nearby over the summer and the Vermont Arts Council gave me a grant to help pay for it. Dealing with tear-out is the most difficult problem of working with figured lumber so I'm sure my new skills will help me save a lot of time on future work.

Update (Nov. 11, 2010): I have added an image of this piece on a real wall to give a more realistic view of it.