Loveland Sculpture

I woke up with Natalie Portman's Shaved Head playing in my head this morning. Sigh, back to work.

It was quite the Colorado whirlwind this weekend, between relatives, friends leaving for grad school, and a Celestial Seasonings tour, there was so much great inspiration. The boy and I did manage to meet some friends at the Loveland Sculpture in the Park Show. I went last year and really loved it. There are so many great things there and established artists to talk to about form and color. It always seems that 60% of the show is realistic bronzes of Indians, Horses, and Buffalo. Which is a little depressing, but that's what sells out here with the cowboy wannabes. The show is definitely worth seeing, even if you have to do a little imagery sifting.

This year, I had the forethought to bring a little sketch book to record compositions and designs. I consider cameras to be rude at art events because then you really have a chance to rip the artist off. With a sketch book you really can't copy to the extreme. So I'm sketching a couple of this woman's bronze sculptures because I liked the abstract fullness and movement in her pieces and her assistant comes over and tells me that they don't let people draw their work. I was outraged but I calmly moved down the line. The boy and I have been having this conversation over the last couple of days about intellectual property and copyrights and this got me thinking about that. All the great masters have had people copy them - that's how people learned to do art. Some of the other people were pleased that I was drawing their stuff because I would tell them that I'm an emerging artist and that I really loved their compositions and colors. Isn't emulation the highest form of respect? It wasn't like I was camped out in front of this ladies tent for hours copying everything that she made, and I would never recreate what she was doing because they were Navajo women statues. It's a big debate in my mind about how much an artist "owns" their work, because a lot of artists pull from lots of other sources. It seems like there are two camps on this one, the pro copyright and those that give their ideas out freely. I should have questioned this lady about her ideas. Too bad.

Anyways, here are some of the artists that inspired me:
Carolyn Sato
Ed Hart
Sean & Anne Gillespie