Xtreme Sculpture

Yesterday in New Media we took a whirlwind tour through the history of art. I felt like we covered a lot in one hour, but a lot of what we covered was in the first chapter of Understanding Comics. What broke new thought ground was a look at three dimensional art, such as this sculpture to your left.

Without knowing too much about art, I would say this sculpture is pretty good. What I like most about it are the metal rays descending from the ceiling. They’re illuminated by sunlight filtering in through a hidden window, and I love that concept of using the room and the environment to enhance the experience.

I think what makes St. Teresa special is that it goes beyond the normal scope of a sculpture and takes advantage of natural aspects of the third dimension, such as lighting and negative space. I think that any arena of creation will have these kinds of inherent benefits, but it takes artists a lot time to discover them. We take things like linear perspective for granted today, but I wonder what else we have yet to create that future generations will think we were blind not to see in the first place?