Saintperle

11/17/04

Joanna Terpstra. Artist

A nice thing about a blog -- you get to hear from people you'd otherwise have no way of knowing.
Some are harsh, some are gentle, but their presence breaks the "typing with one hand" nature of the traditional persona web site.

Had a comment the other day from an artist in Australia, a woman named Joanna Terpstra.
Went to her blog and found some very interesting artwork, landscape and rainforest paintings, well done and capturing much of the spirit of what she's seen.



But it was her sculpture that really caught me. Flowing torsos almost abstracted into pure motion. When I was about 7 years old, I was stunned by 2 pieces of sculpture in the Philadelphia Art Museum, both were Constantin Brancusi's birds.

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They amazed me, expecially the one in bronze. He had done something impossible -- what the critics called "reduced the bird to pure flight..." but in fact had "enlarged the bird into pure flight," pure motion in frozen awe. I seem to recall my thought as "I didn't know you could do that."

Large view of Bird in Space

I spent at least a hundred Saturdays or Sundays with my family at that museum in the following years, often because they showed classic silent films or nature films. But every time, no matter what that week's focus, I couldn't leave without even a brief visit to the Brancusi Birds. (Later, my required viewing was to also include Morris Graves' Fox with Phoenix Wing, a painting that has never been reproduced. Still, his other birds, the Spirit Birds, can be seen here.)

Because they were so overwhelming to me, and because I spent so much time in that gallery, I came to know other artists being shown there -- Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Picasso's early cubism. If the birds took my breath away, Duchamp's Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Selavy? made me ponder and meditate.

marcel duchamp-why not sneeze rrose selavy (1921/64)
But I digress.


When I saw Ms Terpstra's sculptures -- torsos -- once again there was that feeling that someone had distilled motion into a frozen object. Pure motion almost abstract but amazingly full and physical, Brancusi with breasts.





It doesn't hurt that they're also very sexy.

Definitely worth looking at.

My thanks to you Ms Terpstra, for linking up and for sharing these works. Godspede, good health to you, and continued insights and ecstasies.



(For anyone having trouble viewing Ms Terpstra's work on this blog, try this link directly to her studio:)

www.joannaterpstra.com.au/Stone_Sculptures.htm

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