These are process images of the installation- full size material studies and models. final Materials for the project are 5′ long 1/2″ diameter dowels, rip stop nylon, tubing, hardware.The final installation will be in a 20′ X 30′ room with 14′ high cielings. 
Receive Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant
September 3, 2012
Hurray! I am thrilled to have support from the Vermont arts council for an innovative installation I am developing. This installation radically transforms the concept of the maypole dance…a group of people use a movement system to perform/construct a series of large outdoor textile installations.
The Brattleboro Museum will present the work -likely in spring 2014.
here is a design/sketch (very rough) of what one such construction might look like.
Below some early images of the installation process and of the finished installation. See previous post for the text of Miriam Sagan’s poem which is incised on the steel plates seen on the floor.
Soledad is one of 2 installations based on poems by Miriam Sagan in the exhibit “Time Pieces: Wendover Landing”. The exhibit remains up through August 11, 2012. Soledad is made of ripstop nylon, wood dowels, ribbon and steel.
The images presented below include studio shots taken during fabrication and a photoshop image of the installation as it will look in the gallery. I will install the work in the week between May 21st and may 26th.
I plan to attend the opening so say hello if you happen to be there.
Miriam Sagan’s poem:
Soledad
reading in bed
in the little trailer
at the edge of town
a crescent moon
hangs
over millions of acres
of darkness
desert sunrise–
Venus, burnished…
and everything
I don’t understand
and all of
desire
rolls towards me
like the waves
of a primeval sea.
My artist’s statement:
I created the installation “Soledad” in direct response to the poem by Miriam Sagan. I read Sagan’s poem looking for imagery, dualities, and contrasts in the text that could guide my search for a visual approach to the installation. I noticed the expanding scale in the poem – text, bed, trailer, town, millions of acres, Venus, all of desire- and I expressed this idea with the chevron form of the wall pieces and their enlarging size as they are distributed across the wall. I noticed the transition in Sagan’s imagery from darkness towards light and from the earthly realm of human enclosure and habitation towards allusions to the celestial and distant time. The presence of a text -implied by the phrase “reading in bed”- occupies in the poem the grounded real of human settlement as the reader is nested within the bed, trailer, and town. I have therefore incised the text of the poem on dark steel bars – a material that has weight and that is associated with buildings. The white fabric wall forms suggest the celestial realm, the coming of day and the imagined waves of the “primordial sea”. These stretched fabric forms blend into the white of the gallery wall, a wall that can be understood as a metaphor for the infinite space and potential of the creative imagination, which includes for me “everything I don’t understand” and “all of desire”. The fabrics forms are pulled taught and are anchored to the floor by ribbons that connect them to the steel bars. As there is a functional and formal connection between the grounded steel text elements and the floating light forms of the fabric, so too I imagine delicate threads connecting the reader to their thoughts of celestial bodies, the coming of day, primordial times, their emotions and their imagination.
I approached the fabrication of the installation by using materials and methods that were new to me. This installation is made of rip-stop nylon, birch dowels, grommets, ribbon and steel. The chevron forms are very lightweight tensile structures influenced by tent and kite construction. The constraints presented by “Soledad” – the distance of Albuquerque from my studio in Vermont, the limited shipping budget, limited time on site to install and the limited loads that the gallery ceiling could support- pushed me to make an installation that is lightweight, collapses for shipping and can be deployed relatively quickly. Because of my experience in architecture, I think about how fabrication and construction influence form and how the constraints of a project – site, budget, shipping, logistics, time, available labor – can serve to inspire and stir up a creative process rather than undermine it.
Photos of “Surface Tension” and “Points of View” as installed at BCA Center, Burlington VT
September 15, 2011
These images are of two recent installations of mine created for a solo show in Burlington Vermont that was in place January and February of 2011. Ken Burris did a terrific job of photographing these two room size installations.
The black crocheted piece is called “Surface Tension” and is made of over 20,000 ft of hand crocheted black rope. The conical forms are supported via a counterweight system, crocheted sacks loaded with river stones. The room in which this piece is sited is approximately 26′ X 36′ X 10′ .
The Bamboo and reflective tape artwork is titled “Points of View”. Blue reflective tape was mounted at level on a scaffold of bamboo tetrahedrons. This work alludes to the way water finds its own level and to our human tendency to impose order on a landscape. Visitors to this installation were given headlamps with which to view the work.
"Surface Tension", Black Polyester Hand-crocheted rope, River Stones, Carabeeners,dimensions variable, 2011
"Surface Tension", Black Polyester Hand-crocheted rope, River Stones, Carabeeners,dimensions variable, 2011
"Points of View", Painted Bamboo poles, Reflective Blue Tape, Connectors, Dimensions Variable, 2011
"Points of View", Painted Bamboo poles, Reflective Blue Tape, Connectors, Dimensions Variable, 2011
My sculpture in “Hello from Vermont” exhibition at Gallerie Maison Kasini, Montreal
February 3, 2011
One of My suspended crocheted sculptures “Taper with Counterweight” , will be in an upcoming show from Feb 9 to March 5 at Gallerie Maison Kasini in the Belgo Building, #408 372 Ste. Catherine West , Montreal, Quebec 514-448-4723 . The opening Reception is Saturday February 12th from 3-5 pm. This exhibition is curated by Ric Kasini Kadour. See link at right of page to Gallerie Maison Kasini.
" Taper with Counterweight" Hand crocheted polypropylene rope
BCA show complete! opening reception friday 5-8 pm , jan 14th, 2011
January 11, 2011
"Points of View", bamboo, paint, tubing and hardware, 2011
I’m done! Just finished up yesterday afternoon. We added reflective tape to posts and trees in city hall park, extending the “shimmering blue waterline” in my installation “Points of View” out into the great landscape beyond the gallery walls. The lighting and final labeling of the show will be completed by the Gallery staff this week. Keep in mind that the photos posted here are quick shots taken by me at the end of a long day without finished lighting. I include below the content of a review of my work written by my friend Andy Sichel, artist and a former professor of art at Rutger’s University.He very generously surprised me with this a couple of days ago, sending his remarks out via e-mail to his community.
"Surface Tension", Crocheted polyester rope, carabiners, river stones, 2011
I have watched my brilliant friend Alisa’s work as a sculptor and draftswoman evolve and mature over more than a decade now and I wanted to share this with you all.
Her work is informed by her feminist consciousness, her “day jobs” as a Yale trained architect, teacher at Norwich University (VT) and as the mother of two quickly growing children.
Alisa’s work melds a thorough and considered understanding of art history with the tenacity of sticking with an initially wise and equally considered choice of “art parents” whom I see as extending from Shamanism through the Artisanal and site specific works of the middle ages, the Utopian visionary, architecturally schooled sculptors and painters of the High Renaissance and Mannerist periods into Dada and Surrealism, the Bio-morphism of Archile Gorky/ Abstract Impressionism, early Modernist architecture (and Meret Oppenheim) ,and the obvious continuing thread of her visually acknowledged Feminist and late Modernist “mother” Eva Hesse, whose mere five year tragically abbreviated career staked fervent ground for many lesser and some (older) peer women sculptors like Jacquie Windsor whose work because of its materials and apparent lack of feminist content is sometimes seen as at odds with more avowedly feminist work like Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party.
However as women artists continue to be hugely under-represented it seems to me that any woman artist who manages to be seen and acknowledged becomes “Feminist” by virtue of being available as a model of a still marginalized minority. Dworsky’s crocheted rope sculptures are certainly per se more avowedly feminist than Louise Bopurgeois’ or Alice Aycock’s work yet their process and scale share the more traditionally “male” muscularity of these more celebrated women artists. Alisa’s sculpture has in the past decade spoken to art’s role in relation to architecture and/or environment and I’m particularly impressed with the maturation of the crucial component of a cognitive and affective personal visual/conceptual vocabulary in her work. This is what elevates innovative good art, which nominally contributes to the ongoing contemporary art/philosophy discourse (which is sometimes a lot of noise) to art which whilst doing that, echoes above the clamor to a sustained intriguing and ultimately mysterious conversation which is not happening with the intent of an elitist mystification but which invites us in, as with Joseph Cornell’s work, and transcends the nuts and bolts de rigeur covered bases to, with luck, become part of the larger enduring historical discourse.
Please share this around!
Best to you and Brava Alisa!
Andy
(Andy Sichel)
The installation of my solo show at BCA is almost complete!
January 6, 2011
"Points of View" Going up in the Gallery
I’m exausted but pleased with how the onsite installation phase of my show at the Burlington City Arts is going. “Surface Tension” went up in a day and half. Meanwhile I’ve been working with 2-4 assistants at a time to construct “Points of View. The images posted here are rough, no great lighting, still work to do but they will give you a sense of how everything is developing. Remember the opening reception is friday January 14, 5-8 pm. The doors to the show open january 7th at 5 pm. Click the BCA center link to the right for more info on the location and gallery. See earlier postings about this show for more info.
"Surface Tension" in the gallery prior to final lighting
I start installing two new installations and a suite of new prints on January 2nd for my upcoing solo show at the BCA Center ( formerly the Firehouse Gallery), 135 Church street, Burlington VT. See my earlier posts to view these works in progress.
” In the exhibit “Drawing Strength”, artist and architectural designer, Alisa Dworsky, presents prints and installations. Drawing is at the basis of all the work presented here including the installations. Dworsky intentionally selects linear materials ( here rope and bamboo) for her constructions, materials she manipulates to express drawing in three dimensions while defining space and form. The artist continues her investigation into the ways that human beings interact with the landscape, particularly our compulsion to impose geometric systems on the spaces we occupy. She presents prosaic materials in unusual ways, draws inspiration from architecture and construction, and provokes the viewer to reexamine the way they see their everyday world. Dworsky uses her art to explore the ambiguity of perception.”
"Surface Tension" in process in my studio
“Alisa Dworsky: Drawing Strength” opens on Jan 7, 2011 at BCA Center, Burlington VT
December 7, 2010
The opening reception will be Friday January 14th from 5-8 pm. I’ll give an informal artist’s talk at 5 pm that night. Stop by if you are in the area. I will also try to be around for the Friday January 7th soft opening during friday night art walk in Burlington.
The title of my show alludes to the influence of drawing on this new body of work ( even though there are no drawings in this show) and the title alludes to the efficient systems of structural support used in these pieces. All the time I’ve spent building and designing structures has inevitably had an impact on my art. I consider these new installations a continuation of my “landscape” works . Instead of responding to a landscape outdoors, I am building a couple of landscapes within the Gallery walls. The installations evolved from my continuing interest in the human tendency to overlay the landscape with geometric systems in an effort to impose order . I enjoy the ”Middle Ground” that Leo Marx speaks of in his great book, The Machine in the Garden. This middle ground moment occurs when culture and nature exert an equal force on a place , each shaping the other in an aesthetic of coexistence which Marx speaks of as the true definition of the pastoral.
I’ve been crocheting in the past few weeks as I prepare “Surface Tension” for the front Gallery on Church Street. There will be a counterweight system supporting it and I have work to do connecting the elements with more crochet at the floor level. It’s coming along. I’m using a “Fillet Crochet ” technique to make a cellular pattern. I vary the size of the ‘cell” creating subtle tonal shifts in the work. I like this approach because the piece is so graphic, the line quality so evident with this play of positive and negative space at my disposal. I could almost write binary code with this technique. Of course the open cells and radiating lines and grids also remind me of computer drawings. The handmade and the digital all wrapped up . I do use computer graphics as well as hand drawing to rough out the shapes and general approach to the installation.
Also in the slide show are a few details of the second installation which will be in the show titled ” Points of View”. This work is made of poles configured in a web of tetrahedrons on which reflective blue tape is mounted in fragments at a level, creating a tenuous shimmering plane . The hidden order within this “landscape” is only visible from a certain point of view.
Thank you to the Vermont Community Foundation, Arts Endowment Fund for the grant which supported the creation of this new work.
