Mary Early Artist Talk

Mary Early makes large sculptures using primarily wood and beeswax by “welding wax” together.  She is interested in space and utilizes the architecture of the place of the sculpture, for instance placing a tall, narrow sculpture in a narrow room with a long hallway to make the viewer have to squeeze past the sculpture.  She uses line and shape to create space that look like it can continue infinitely and is inspired by artists who draw multiple lines on walls within a space.  She loves the material she uses romantically and even though the combination of them sometimes causes warping, she is interested in using this to make something seem more erratic and humanistic.  She likes to make things by hand, though hopes that her work looks like it could have been caused through a natural, organic process rather than from her touch.  It is sort of ironic that she prefers to work with her materials by hand, being as she is a conceptual artist. 

In it’s conceptual aspects and seeming simplicity, her work vaguely reminded me of Sol Lewitt’s or Tara Donovan’s work.  Sol Lewitt gave instructions to the people assembling his work in museums but left the results up to the assembler’s own interpretations.   Mary Early said that she often did not know exactly what her piece would look at before it was assembled, but this was mostly because she did not actually have the space to create the structures ahead of time in her studio, and they may not have withstood traveling to a new location.  Sol Lewitt also focuses on line a great deal, and in connecting wood forms Mary Early’s work predominately shows line.  Tara Donovan made work out of everyday objects such as Styrofoam cups, toothpicks, and other materials to create forms with an overall organic shape.  Beeswax is a common material used in candles and soaps and definitely gives off an organic feel.  Tara Donovan, however, seemed to mock specific forms such as clouds or shells, while Mary Early alludes to the idea of organic forms without mocking specific ones.

Mary Early’s work relates somewhat to my own work in that I desire an overall look of simplicity that she has achieved.  I could relate to the way she approached her ideas, starting with loose sketches even though her final forms often ended up more rigid.  I really like that she worked with Beeswax, and the material is unique and has interesting properties such as the ability to create drips.  It also, as she said, has a history linked to that of sculpture.