23 June 2008

Stacy Levy

Stacy Levy (Courtesy of the artist)

(The following article is taken from the U.S. Department of State publication, Art on the Edge: 17 Contemporary American Artists.)

Sea Column (detail), 2002. Silkscreen on clear acrylic. (Courtesy of the artist and Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA)

"The twentieth century has employed the scientist as the translator of nature. Yet science uses a limited vocabulary to understand the world around us, and it is often in a language of separation rather than integration. It frequently neglects the presence of the viewer in its focus. The very nature of scientific analysis eliminates the subjective experience in favor of objective data. Art has a freer tongue and many languages at its disposal. Without a debt to empirical positivism, art can bind the separate views of science and culture to formulate another way of picturing the earth, in which the viewers are both seeing the natural world and are aware of their part in it at the same time.

My installations investigate aspects of the natural processes which make each site as we know it. Bringing the wind indoors to blow across a compass of 1000 flags, mapping a river with waters from its tributaries and collecting the summer's rainfall are all sculptural inventions which make the invisible forces of nature more salient to the viewer. In my work I attempt to re-explain the scientific explanation of natural systems by redefining their visual components. Meshing the clarity of diagrams and accessibility of maps with the more visceral sense of the site, I try to create an instant of wonder and understanding for the viewer."

[Stacy Levy (b. 1960, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) attended the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (MFA 1991); Skowhegan School of Painting, Maine (1988); Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (BA 1984); and the Architectural Association, London, England (1981). Though her degrees are in sculpture, Levy has trained in forestry, environmental science, and landscape architecture. Invited to exhibit at Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany (2002); she has also received many public art commissions, and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. Levy lives and works in Philadelphia.]