SchoolArts - March 2007

“How can someone have sculptural ideas? I can have an idea how to play a Mozart sonata; I can have an idea how to make baked potatoes. But a sculptural idea is different. It’s like a different mind, where I suppose we dig up some three-dimensional sense. We have an ability to step back . . . and we use that third dimension to take a distance.

“There’s a side of things where you can just make yourself crazy following some idea of what perfection is, but at a certain moment you remember play—that this is supposed to be fun. And I always have this phrase—‘If it ain’t fun, it’s not alive’—to get a sense to draw back.”

Above: Monkey’s Recovery for a Darkened Room ( Bluebird), 1983. Wood, wire, acrylic, matboard, string, and cloth, 40 x 20½ x 12½" (102 x 52 x 32 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, gift of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, Trustees, 2001.9.29. Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York. Right: There’s No Reason a Good Man is Hard to Find III, 1988. Chicken wire, wire, wood, plaster, fabric, spray paint, plastic bucket, and enamel, 53¼ x 45 x 30" (135 x 114 x 76 cm). Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.

Activity Suggestions:

Consider the ways artists have approached the idea of invisibility in literature and art. Read The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, or The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. Compare these authors’ ideas with Tuttle’s interest in invisibility.

Think about the kind of art you made in kindergarten, and what made something as simple as drawing with crayons or molding clay a spontaneous, fun experience. Make a sculpture of found materials reminiscent of that spirit.

Art: 21 Production Stills © Art21, Inc. 2006

ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Art21, Inc. is a non-profit contemporary art organization serving students, teachers, and the general public. Art21 produces the Emmy-nominated, nationally broadcast PBS series Art: 21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, a wide range of education materials, and outreach programs. This multi-faceted project introduces audiences to a diverse range of contemporary visual artists working in the United States today and to the art they are producing now.