I saw El Anatsui's show at the Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College yesterday, and I am SO glad I did! His work absolutely incredible.
Quoting from the Museum's website, here's a description about him and his work (and I added a wikipedia link if you want to know even more):
"El Anatsui (b. 1944, Ghana) is best known for his most recent sculptures, shimmeringly beautiful and elaborately wrought large-scale wall hangings made from discarded liquor-bottle tops. Drawing on traditional idioms and contemporary art practices, his work resonates materially and symbolically with the cultural and historical conditions of West Africa." Read more.
The show closes on June 26th. If you can get to the Museum to see the show, hurry! It's amazing, and for me, very inspirational!
When looking at his wall pieces, I also got to see how he mounts them on the wall, and it's giving me ideas about how to better hang my Fences as Lace Series.
He mounts styrofoam on the wall and hangs his work off of the styrofoam, using clear plexiglass dowels to help drape his work. Brilliant!
Before I saw how El Anatsui did it, all I could think of was using clear pushpins, which is not very professional. If I use some styrofoam behind the top of my work, it'll pull it away from the wall, and give it more depth and help create more shadows. I'm going to investigate this further.
