Annotated Bibliography for BFA Thesis Proposal

Jaime K. An-Wong

Annotated Bibliography for BFA Thesis Proposal

Bolender, Karin, “Into the Holocene: The Art of Steven Siegel”, Dutchess Magazine,

February 2000

-Steven Siegel is interested in the concept of “deep time.” It is a length of time so long that we

can not grasp or truly understand the events over that interval of time when we are standing in

front of its final representation at the present time.

-This concept began a career long artistic interrogation of the essential cycles of deposit and decay that underlie the making of the land.

Knight, Richard and Riedel, Suzanne, “Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience,” (Oxford

University Press, New York, 2002) ISBN 0-19-514943-2

-We are citizens of the biotic community.

-“Those who embrace the land ethic have the satisfaction of being in the vanguard of social

evolution, partaking in a uniquely human capacity. Leopold described the capacity of one

species to care about the fate of another as ‘a new thing under the sun.’”

Lehan, Joanna, “Ecotopia: The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video,” (International Center of

Photography, New York, 2006) ISBN 3-86521-310-3

-Environmental impact is on the minds of most thoughtful people of our generation. The

book showcases the work of artists who are examining in a broad sense the environment and

humankind’s relationship to it.

-Nature is a source of a great deal of cultural anxiety. Nature has been ascribed with positive and

even spiritual values but the a paradox is presented since our present culture, dominated by a

notion of progress, is intent on the relentless destruction of nature. In 100 years, nature has shifted from something awesome and dangerous, which we need to be protected from, to something fragile, which we need to protect.

Leopold, Aldo, “A Sand County Almanac,” (Oxford University Press, New York, 1949)

ISBN 0-19-505305-2

About progress and modernization:

-We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

-May be ‘climate change’ is nature’s way of taking back what we have abused, the land with its

rising sea levels.

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Jaime K. An-Wong

McPhee, John, “Basin and Range” (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York, 1980)

ISBN 0-374-10914-1

-Artists capture and distill countless aspects of our lives.

-After reading this book, Steven Siegel fully engaged the idea of “deep time.” The term relates to

geology, James Hutton first observed, then realized that the earth’s processes of erosive breakdown and uprising renewal had been going on, a never imagined time longer than previously suspected.

Norton, Bryan, “Searching for Sustainablility,” (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003)

ISBN 0-521-80990-8

Sustainable living:

-In terms of geologic processes and of life on earth, Bryan Norton narrates the story of the cranes migrating to the marshes of Wisconsin, as described by Aldo Leopold. The history of migrating cranes dates back to the time of glaciers, describing the formation of the pond and surrounding marshes, the ecological conditions that allowed the cranes to find a niche in Wisconsin. He recognizes that they have survived many earlier, gradual transformations of their habitat, and then laments how, in so many marshes, they had succumbed to human alteration of their habitat in just a few generations.

-Leopold’s aesthetic explanation: “Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with

the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by

language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, as yet beyond the reach of words.”

-The espoused philosophy, is that nature does not make mistakes. In order for us to understand

we must take the time to observe nature and listen to what it has to say. We must live with nature

(in the wild) and to experience it. We will then be able to live in harmony with the environment

around us, in a sustainable way.

Phillips, Patricia C., “Wandering Through Time: The Sculpture of Steven Siegel”, Sculpture,

October 2003

-Steven Siegel makes great accumulations from small elements of a single material elaborately

layered and stacked into monolithic forms that often look like boulders or vessels, geological

formations or immense artifacts.

-Siegel uses recycled materials, the overwhelming evidence of voracious cycles of production and

consumption. A painstaking process of fabrication requires the artist and other willing

participants to engage in long periods of repetitive, yet thoughtful activity.

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Jaime K. An-Wong

Siegel, Steven. 2003. http://stevensiegel.net

Studio Project: Wonderful Life (mixed media)

-The title is shared with the 1989 publication of the same title by Stephen Jay Gould. Evolutionary biology has rich parallels to the creative process and the development of craft. By letting simple materials follow their own obvious means of organization what exactly would evolve?

-This was Siegel’s attempt to bring the spirit of Land Art indoors.

Smithson, Robert, “Cultural Confinement,” in Art in Theory, 1900 -2000, ed. Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul, (Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts, 1992) ISBN 978-0-631-22707-6

-One of the principal strategies of Land Art was to move the work out of the confines of the

gallery towards a more directly critical relation to the modern world.

-“I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to

day apart from representation. The parks that surround some museums isolate art into objects

of formal delectation.”

-My hope is to bring some of this vitality indoors.

Smithson, Robert, “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects,” in Art in Theory, 1900 -2000),

Ed. Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul, (Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts, 1992)

ISBN 978-0-631-22707-6

About geologic and natural processes:

-The strata of the Earth are a jumbled museum. The sediments contain the remnants of history

over an interval of time, which are layered consecutively one on top of another.

-“In order to read the rocks we must become conscious of geologic time, and of the layers

of prehistoric material that is entombed in the Earth’s crust.”

-Oxidation, hydration, reduction, and dissolution are the major processes of rock and mineral

disintegration, “that could be turned toward the making of art”.

Wilson, Edward, “ Consilience: The Unity Of Knowledge,” (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1998)

ISBN 0-679-45077-7

-The legacy of the Enlightenment is the belief that entirely on our own we can know, and in knowing, understand, and in understanding, choose wisely.

-At the core of consilience is the principles discovered in one discipline, such as in science, will also be true in other disciplines, such psychology or the visual art. Take for example, the physics of colored light (with different wavelengths) will apply in the visualization of color by the eye and interpreted inthe brain. The separation of colors by wavelengths holds true in seeing different colors in the eye. The perception of colors and the associated emotions generated are also consistent in physiologic psychology terms. And, for the artist the color in pigments are differentiated by the same characteristic wavelengths reflected off the canvas. The emotional attachments follow it an orderly and structured way as processed in the mind.

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Jaime K. An-Wong