Ursula von Rydingsvard in Wyoming

Ursula von Rydingsvard, “Doolin Doolin” on the terrace of the University of Wyoming Art Museum. 

The University of Wyoming Art Museum recently mounted the exhibition Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational. Pictured above on the Museum’s terrace is “Doolin, Doolin” by Art21 artist Ursula von Rydingsvard (Season 4). This large-scale sculpture (83 x 212 x 77 inches) was the centerpiece for von Rydingsvard’s 1997 solo exhibition at Galerie Lelong. A New York Times reviewer of the Lelong show commented on the piece: ”Doolin, Doolin, [named] after an Irish seacoast town, evokes a set of stout, ocean-battered cliffs or, more fancifully, a cluster of clifflike sentinels bent on guarding a land of myth and poetry.”

Ursula von Rydingsvard, “Doolin, Doolin” (detail), 1995-97. Cedar and graphite. © Ursula von Rydingsvard, courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York.

The sculpture (detail above) is created from carved 2 x 4-inch cedar beams rather than von Rydingsvard’s more commonly used 4 x 4-inch beams. In an Art21 interview   the artist said, “If I were to point to something from the [postwar refugee] camps that one can see most directly in my work it is that we stayed in barracks—with raw wooden floors, walls, and ceilings. I have a feeling that that fed into my working with wood. And the first time I ever saw Poland—all of the villages, all the homes there, were made of wood. There were stacks of wood, doors, and troughs of wood. Wood was the building material. So it’s somewhere in my blood, and I’m dipping into that source. The way in which I manipulate the cedar is very important to me, but I have a feeling that I even learned from things that I never saw.”

Sculpture is on view at the UW Art Museum through July 31, 2009. Visit the exhibition blog for the latest information.

 

 

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