I believe that every artist creates their own art history, usually at the beginning of their career with realistic renderings and with practice and time seeking their own vision and interpretation of the world. My own journey has certainly taken this path, but I will pick it up after my time at the Johnson Atelier. Although I learned much technically at the Atelier, I don’t feel my artwork blossomed until 5 years after I left employment there (those 5 years I took off from artwork – raising little ones).
From 1995 to 2016 I was exploring the underlying structures of forms in nature and looking at them, for the most part, in multiples, noting both the similarities and differences between them. At the beginning of this period, I was combining wirework and newsprint paper with acrylic medium into organic shapes of pods, cones and loaf shapes. These forms were much more organic than anything I had done previously. Around 2002 I began silver soldering brass to replace the hand-worked wire and my forms became more “cubed” both because of the change in wire and my desire to abstract the rounded organic forms. In 2008 I became more interested in botanical structures -the pods, leaves and branches of the brass-only series, mostly inspired by becoming an avid gardener and reflecting my environment of living in the woods. I really enjoyed the forming of three dimensional shapes with multiple wires (like drawing in the air!) Several years ago I began experimenting with cast rubber and beeswax. I also began doing chainmail. I have always loved metal, the way it smells heated up and the way it “fights back” when working with it, while also being very versatile. I was very intrigued to combine the very recent symbols in our lives, from computers, into the very old technique of chainmail, and see these as physical forms of highly pixilated symbols.
This brings me to 2017. It has been said that artists experience a drastic change in their practice in middle age. It’s true! I began to look at the creatures we share our world with and the impact we have on them. My first piece in this new series is “Don’t Tread On Me”, a look at the way we have used the snake in both narrative (Adam & Eve) and our images (Caduceus and the Gadsden flag). Stay tuned – there are more animals to come.
Wendy W. Gordon
