Sculpture – Mostly True

Straining to Be, Wilmington, NC

This beautiful sculpture is by Wilmington artist Paul Hill. The piece, made of carbon steel and found objects, is located on Front Street in Wilmington, North Carolina. Being both a lover of art and a dog person, I love the way Hill captures the shape and the attitude of a leashed dog.

But there’s more to the work than “just a dog.” Hill uses animal imagery to depict, as his bio states, “the unpredictable human emotions and frustrations, that are daily being thrust into the lives of every person.” We are all “straining to be” free from the constraints that leave us tethered to our current situations.

I also love the art-deco feel to the piece, an influence that Hill has acknowledged. I can see similarities between Lee Lawrie’s famous art-deco statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center in New York and Hill’s leashed dog, as Atlas strains to support the weight of the world and the dog pulls against the constraints of the leash that holds it back. It’s a beautiful work of art that I find quite moving.

If you would like to see more of Paul Hill’s beautiful art, check out his website.

Straining To Be Free- Paul Hill

George Rickey, Three Red Lines, NC Art Museum

One of the North Carolina’s Art Museum’s newest pieces, Three Red Lines is a kinetic sculpture by American Sculptor George Rickey. The graceful red arms slowly move back and forth in an arc. It’s a beautiful sculpture and the slow arcs of the arms can be mesmerizing.

During World War II, Ricky worked worked in aircraft and gunnery systems and became interested in mechanics and movement. He combined his art training with his love of mechanics to create large kinetic sculptures that moved with air currents. His work has been exhibited around the globe including in Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.

The work, along with sculptures by Spanish artist Joan Miró and American artist Ellworth Kelly are on loan from the Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

george rickey- three red lines

Awilda & Irma, NC Art Museum

This ethereal work of two heads- a mother and daughter- by award winning Spanish artist Jaume Plensa was installed at the North Carolina Museum Park in April 2017. The wire mesh construction and size make it difficult to determine race or gender, creating a kind of universal portrait.

Plensa’s art has been exhibited worldwide, from Sweden, Spain and France to Chicago and, now Raleigh.

Art amazes me. I love the way the artist can make these 13-foot tall steel mesh heads feel fleeting and lighter than air. The expressions on the closed-eyed faces also impart a dream-like feel. Finally, due to the mesh construction, the sculptures seem to change as you view them from different angles. I never tire of looking at them.

Awilda and Irma 2

Gulls, Nazaré, Portugal

There’s art of all sizes and styles in Portugal. These little sculptures are on the wall at the fortaleza. They’re simple and colorful and a bit whimsical and perfect for a view of the beach from the fort.

Fortaleza Gull Art

Surf Monument, Nazaré, Portugal

There are statues and monuments all over Portugal. Most of them memorialize people and events from Portugal’s history. The statue in Nazaré, on the road to the Fortaleza, is probably one of the strangest monuments in Portugal.

The statue, named Veado and created by Portuguese sculptor Adália Alberto, was placed in 2016 and honors the legend of Nazaré as well as the town’s legendary status as the home to some of the best surfing and biggest waves in the world.

Veado

First, the legend. In the fifth century, a monk named Ciriaco returned from Nazareth to the monastery of Cauliniana with a small wooden statue of Mary with the Infant Jesus which, by oral tradition, is said to have been carved by Mary’s husband, Joseph, the carpenter. The icon remained at the monastery until 711, when invading Moorish armies defeated Christian forces.

Roderic, the defeated king, fled to the coast, accompanied by a monk, Romano, who carried the icon with him when the men fled. When the two men reached the Atlantic, they separated, with Frei Romano living out his days, still in possession of the statue, in a cliff-side cave overlooking what is now Nazaré.

Fast forward a few hundred years, to an early morning when a knight, Dom Fuas Roupinho, was hunting on the cliff overlooking the ocean. The knight was in pursuit of a deer when a heavy fog suddenly descended. The deer, blinded by the fog, ran over the edge of the cliff. Dom Roupinho, realizing that he was very close to the grotto where the icon still remained, prayed to Our Lady to save him from certain death. His horse, though blinded by the fog, miraculously stopped at the edge of the cliff, saving the knight from death.

So that’s the legend of Nazaré, and where the deer head comes from. Now for the surfing. Nazaré’s North Beach is legendary for the giant waves that come out of the Atlantic and provide some of the best big wave surfiing in the world. In 2011, American Garrett McNamara set the world record by surfing a 78-foot wave at North Beach. Two years later he shattered his own record by surfing a giant 100-foot wave at the same beach.

So now you know the two legends that inspired Veado, the statue overlooking Praia do Norte, in Nazaré.

Paulo Neves Sculpture, Braganza Palace, Guimarães, Portugal, March 2018

From the plaque:

“It is said that “trees die standing tall”. But, the leafy horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) that lived here in front of the Palace of the Dukes, and whose trunk “slices” are exhibited here, fell ingloriously on a stormy night in 2016. The chestnut fell, but the magnificence of the trunk and the beauty of its wood deserved better fate than that of ending up heating someone’s home.

“So, we challenged the sculptor Paulo Neves to use his creativity, and his great wisdom, and sensibility to give life to the old trunk. And thus, this set of pieces was born, beautiful in their natural simplicity, open in their core, rough on their exterior, combining the lightness of the wood and the darkness of the bark and adorned with two parallel incisions in a dark shade. The old trunk turned into art to be enjoyed by all those who come by”.

Paolo Neves Art

Everywhere we went in Portugal, there was art. From magnificent paintings in the local church to street art painted on a wall, it’s evident that the people of this country love art. I love this piece for its simplicity and the way Paulo Neves uses Nature itself to create art. Beauty can be found everywhere, even in the ruins of an old chestnut tree.

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