There’s many sculptors who’ve worked with metal cut-out shapes. Calder is the one that comes to mind, and Picasso, Gonzales, Smith, Russian Constructivists, Oldenburg, a lot of Minimalists. There’s much to like, but I’d always held a reservation that cut-outs were a shortcut to sculpture, not real sculpture, and somewhat of a 2D interpretation of sculpture, like what a painter would make if asked to sculpt something.

Then I saw some works by Adolph Gottlieb last Fall at the UM Art Museum here in town. Definitely a painter, clearly derived from his painting, and something that I really enjoyed looking at. I accepted the idea that sculpture of this type is derived from drawing, and that is it’s purpose; to set itself off of the flat page into a sort of optical space that is still not fully three-dimensional. A kind of a visual image of space, not real space itself. So that’s what it is, and I decided to see if I could come up with a work for this medium.

I’ve been occupied by the idea of the Venus-Woman reclining-Nude over the Winter, produced a model for a carving in wood to do, which I haven’t started, and thought; can I also take this into a flat space and do it differently too? So I began with some drawings.

And then models, of what else, cut-out cardboard, no really, foam-core, which is what after all? – status cardboard. A small one- 8”

A larger one- 16”, but slightly awkward-

And one more, with a shorter body and better proportions – 14”

Along the way I decided she would be laying down, in the classic reclining pose. And Blue, the color of infinity, the sky & water.

So I like this, and I’m seriously planning making a larger, out of plywood, about the size of a large coffee-table or couch, and painted blue, Infinity Blue. Infinity Blue Woman.