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From the Sacred to the Elemental
Barbara Sorensen’s work carries many meanings from its materials, forms, to its myriad references. Her works simultaneously refer to the landscape, are metaphors for passing time, and embody ideas, many of which carry ceremonial or elemental implications.
The human impulse to create three-dimensional objects and images from materials taken from the earth is a primal one-archaeologists have discovered small clay figures of humans and animals that dating to 24,000 BC. These early works, found in present-day Czech Republic and probably used in ritual and ceremony, were formed from clay mixed with animal fat and bone and then fired in rudimentary kilns.Like those timeless Czech figures, each piece in Sorensen’s vessels, Chalice and Boats, as well as those in the figural Goddess, Siren, and Muse series, is hand-formed from clay and fired. Like early Neolithic pottery, their surfaces are decorated with patterns incised into the earth from which they are made or, as in a number of Sorensen’s vessels and Shields, by pushing small stones and forms into the clay before firing.
The similarity to antiquity does not end there; each Sorensen work also holds consecrated, mythic references. For example, the ancient Roman calyx or chalice was a goblet or footed cup intended to hold a ceremonial drink, often made of precious metals with intricate surface decoration. Sorensen’s Chalices and Chalice Forest installation echo the ancient forms.
Rather than silver and gold, however, Sorensen’s Chalices are formed from clay. Instead of elaborate decorations, her versions bear simpler, crumpled patterns and earth-toned glazes. Yet seen in a group of ten, her monumental Chalice Forest appears as an offering to the gods or large a grouping of massive, abstract heads gazing heavenward.
Similarly, the rounded forms of Sorensen’s Shields remind the viewer of those carried by medieval soldiers. Like their Dark Ages counterparts, each of Sorensen’s bears a different emblem, like a coats of arms in bas-relief from two-dimensional clay and stone pieces laid onto the shield surface, which is in turn etched with an incised pattern and a subtly colored glaze.
Some of Sorensen’s works-her Goddesses, Sirens and Muses-draw inspiration from the body of myth and legend the ancient Greeks developed in order to describe the nature of the world and their lives.
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were daughters of the sea and earth gods; they were dangerous seductresses whose enchanting singing lured sailors to rocky coastlines-there to wreck their ships and drown. The Muses were born when Zeus and the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, slept together for nine consecutive nights. The nine goddesses resulting from their union gave birth to the creation of literature and the arts.
Sorensen’s immense Sirens and Muses stand on individual pedestals, larger than life. The headless clay figures call to mind Greek sculpture, with each slightly different, an icon to femininity and the human form.
Another figure from Greek mythology, Pandora, was made from the earth-from clay-to become the first woman. The gods gave her the gifts of beauty and seduction, but the gifts to her were also meant as a punishment to mankind for Prometheus’ theft of fire. Famously, the curious Pandora made her opened a forbidden jar, thus unleashing all the evils and ills of mankind upon the world. Only hope was left enclosed in the jar.
Sorensen has created Pandora’s Boxes, a series of nine clay chests which stand closed in a square. It is unclear whether they have or have not yet been opened by their mythic namesakes.
Sorensen’s Foothills and Hanging Boats installation blends contemporary technology with works that represent a deep view of time. Millennia are implied by the slices of clay laid upon the floor like tectonic plates, while rivers, winds, and fire-the forces that helped form the earth’s surface-are projected onto them.
The installation evokes the red, iron-laden mountains and rocks of southern Utah, where subtly colored layers of clay and rock open up to give us a view that spans thousands of years. Ceramic fired boats like those used to transport ancient people hang above these foothills. With striations and pebbled areas, their surfaces appear rough, like the barks of trees.
Sorensen recently turned from clay to other materials to create Dwellings, Wind, and Pools, series of environments that manipulate, contain, and extend into space. Made of materials including aluminum, wire, resin, and rope, the works all reference organic shapes formed in real life by the elements.
Dwellings are metal, free-form armatures in black or primary colors with complex exoskeletons around a spacious, empty core. Their intricately woven bands divide and flow through both the interior and exterior of the works; when placed outside, they seem to sway and dance with the wind.
Some Dwellings resemble honeycombed cocoons; others repose on the floor like temporarily arrested tumbleweeds. Several hang on the wall and recall sea urchins or jellyfish, their shapes seemingly moving with the current, while others appear like nautilus shells whose outer skin has disappeared leaving only the skeleton behind.
Made from white resin and wire, the forms in Sorensen’s Wind series spiral out towards the viewer to draw deeply into each one’s darkened center. Resembling tornadoes, each cylindrical cone throws long shadows. Reinforcing the perception of the forms’ active vitality and power, these “twisters” bend and sway like the powerful winds that circle the landscape.
Dunes populate their flattened landscape like small, jutting hills growing organically from a wide circumferences at their bottom with resin-covered rope and wire mesh infrastructures. Each Dune circles to a pointed summit, as if shaped on the shoreline by wind sweeping through the sand.
Sorensen’s Pools invert the Wind form, originating with a small circumference at the bottom and then expanding toward its wide, open height. The Pools gape like the open mouths of sea creatures, resembling eddies and whirlpools that suddenly appear like underwater tornadoes.
From making works from the earth, Sorensen has progressed to making works that recall and embody those atavistic elements that form the earth. Whether working with clay, metal, ropes or resin, the artist continues to create haunting forms that carry multiple allusions and associations and reward extended viewing.
Barbara Bloemink, Former Curator Museum of Arts and Design
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Site Specific: Echoes
Barbara Sorensen originally considered a different career in art and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in art education from the University of Wisconsin. As an undergraduate at UW, she was inspired by her faculty advisor Don Reitz, who was by then a well-known ceramicist. Her interest quickly turned to ceramics and she initiated a new career path as a professional artist. Beginning in 1972, Sorensen began working alongside such renowned ceramic artists as Rudy Autio, Paul Soldner, Peter Voulkos, Don Reitz and eventually Dan Gunderson. This was a formative time for Sorensen, as she began developing her own style by learning from the masters. Since then, she has earned a reputation as a versatile sculptor working in a range of media. Her works have been included in numerous exhibitions around the country and can be found in many museum, corporate and private collections.
Sorensen was first fascinated by clay for its plasticity. Unlike any other three-dimensional medium, clay has the ability to be molded and reworked so long as it remains damp. Its malleable nature allows ceramic pieces to evolve over time and allows the artist to employ a number of processes, i.e. building, throwing and carving, to create a finished work. What also sets clay apart from other sculptural techniques is its ability to be formed without tools. The act of shaping the clay with her bare hands gives Sorensen the sense of being physically connected to her work.
Although her background as an artist began with clay, Sorensen now works with an array of material, from aluminum and foam to found objects. Her most recent pieces are inspired by the power of nature. These organic abstractions made of clay or mixed materials mimic the natural undulation of rolling hills and craggy rock formations. Sorensen is interested in how geologic evolution implicitly affects us not only physically, but also psychologically. Her installation titled Speleothem is a recreation of a sublime cavernous environment. With its dark and mysterious environment, inhabited by towering and hanging geologic forms, Sorensen creates an environment within the museum that momentarily suspends our connections with the typical gallery environment.
A series by Sorensen that does not address the role of nature is her Dwellings. These brightly colored forms resemble webbed cocoons. Sometimes standing, sometimes attached to a wall, and sometimes floating, these abstract sculptures act as three-dimensional drawings that question what is interior and what is exterior. For Sorensen, these are physical and visual depictions of bundles of spiritual energy. They are “dwelling places” for residual energy from the past that we cannot see, but coexist with everyday.
Adam Justice, Curator Polk Museum of Art
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The Matriculation of the Vessel
There is no doubt that the power of the earth is enmeshed in Barbara Sorensen’s works. There is a tactile quality in all her clay pieces that speak of the cragginess and topography of our environment. Even her Pools and Dunes, although made out of different materials, suggest the envelope of the earth: its currents and vortexes. Her aluminum pieces, Dwellings, seem delicate, almost lighter than air, another aspect of the earth. But there is another reference detected in Sorensen’s works when seen in a comprehensive collection. From 1993 until today, there is a sense of a seminal shape, the vessel form, developing. It begins as a bud, a tight fist, and as it slowly matures, grows open to release its mystic power.
Sorensen may have chosen the vessel form from her own feminine sensitivity or because of its eternal qualities. It was an intuitive choice. Through her artistic odyssey, she has used it as a metaphor for both reality and the spiritual. Early on, her production centered on smaller shapes-Pandora’s Boxes-rough, bulging chests encrusted with jagged gems, only hinting of the treasure of gilt and azure paint inside. This vessel, prickly on the outside and internally rich, seems metaphorically to be a portrait of a nascent artist, a rough exterior ready for criticism hiding the sensitivity inside.As Sorensen progressed, this tight fist of a box started to open and grow, just like the artist. Across Florida in one-person exhibitions, the evolution of the shape altered, becoming a Chalice. This bulging, open-ended vessel wasn’t meant for beverages, but rather symbolized that which nourishes the spirit. As she matured as an artist, she allowed for the Chalice form to elongate, stretch and matriculate into a Goddess, a vessel of a very different kind. It is interesting that a Pandora’s Box, named for a woman made from earth and a large jar that when opened unleashed many terrible things on mankind: ills, toils, sickness-and Hope-would eventually, in Sorensen’s hands, become a Goddess.
Sorensen, with her growing confidence and energy, allowed the vessel form to evolve into Boats and Ledges, symbols of survival and safety. As usual, the surfaces of these veritable life rafts looks corrugated and anything but buoyant, but there is more here than meets the eye. Throughout her career she has enjoyed the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi. This Eastern concept is rooted in transience, spontaneity, and suggestion of the natural process. Sorensen specifically chooses materials and processes that allow for changes during the firing. This abandon, rather than rigid control, imbues her work with visual intensity.
The culmination of Sorensen’s work could be her new series, Dwellings. The vessel shape is still inherent, but in a brand new form. These airy, colorful installations can climb over a wall or seem to tumble across the ground. Instead of clay or bronze, this powder-coated aluminum seems lighter than air and capable of weathering a nor’easter’s blast. Notice how the vessel has opened wide with no containing walls, rendering it open to interpretation on many levels. Sorensen also knows the possibilities of letting light and shadow expand sculpture. These Dwellings take on a moving panorama depending on the time and weather of the day. With these installations, the Wabi-sabi comes from the variety each day brings to the sculpture.
Barbara Sorensen understands something many artists seem to forget. All cultures have objects of ceremony, ritual, celebration and spiritual power. Sometimes our society and our artists seem to be losing these powerful traditions. Sorensen has allowed her spiritual instincts and her humanism to inform her inherent object, the vessel, to demand a response from the viewer. We, the viewers, are reminded of many things: popular culture, mythology, religion and power. Art is a form of communication, and in all times, art should offer some sustenance. Barbara Sorensen has given us symbolic imagery for an aesthetic feast.
Jan Clanton, Associate Curator Orlando Museum of Art
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Thoughts: Don Reitz
It is always a pleasure to watch a student of yours continue to excel over the years in an experimental way; pushing the envelope, exaggerating shapes, combining dissimilar forms, and using color and texture in an aggressive manner to create objects of significance. When these forms are put in their proper context, be it in a living space or an outdoor environment, they do not become answers about art, the viewer goes away asking a question. This, to me, is what art is about. Not telling the whole story, but giving you clues which you can assimilate in your own way.
I remember one afternoon at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Barbara was working with clay forms that were trying desperately to be exaggerated and outgrow the confines she had imposed on them. “Barbara,” I said, “Why the hell don’t you just let them grow?” And I’ll be damned if she didn’t. I applaud her willingness to take chances and not to become complacent with the ordinary. The new forms are setting standards again for the next series. Keep pushing the limits.
Don Reitz, American Ceramic Legend, Artist
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Thoughts: Paul Soldner
From the intimacy of the early Princess Leia forms to the more recent human-sized Pinnacles, Barbara has not only played with scale, but her combination of non-functional forms with geological references have left her work embedded with metaphor. Although layered with meaning, there’s a clarity in her work that is both fresh and vibrant.
Paul Soldner, American Ceramic Legend, Artist, Founder of American Raku
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Thoughts: Rudy Autio
Barbara Sorensen continues to surprise us with her formidable ambition and talent for articulating large and looming forms of paper clay in ceramics. To me it’s an impressive sky-full of shapes! They seem balanced ambiguously, challenging gravity in defiance of an uneasy truce with nature.
She then turns to other inventions that are lacy, enveloping you, embroidering the walls and surrounding space. She also shows opposites, like sturdy juggernauts of heroic pavement stones extruding upwards and inhabiting the ground level as you walk around them. They seemingly spring from nature also and seem part of it.
Some of her sculptural explorations have a hint of the figure, which I really like. They are understated and mysterious as she continues her search in expanding her knowledge of expressive ceramics. She builds on her inventive history of clay, developing new amazing forms, textures, space, and volume relationships. My admiration grows with her tenacious and significant development in the clay medium.
Rudy Autio, American Ceramic Legend, Artist