Art
woodswomen series - being updated...
photographs copyright 2017 frank kosempa
I cannot look at a tree anymore without seeing women.
My Woodswoman sculptures are my Earth poems. They are of the earth and from the earth: Nature is my inspiration. She is the best artist around.
I feel strongly about our disregard for the Earth, damaging her, filling her with objects made with obsolescence in mind. I love rescuing beautiful objects consumed for a time, then recklessly thrown away. Wood, stone, bone, and shell speak to my heart and spirit. Using animal bones is my way of honoring their life, their being, their beauty and death.
The recycling of found materials too connects my work both to the past and the future. My art is my diary or journal, my personal memories of strangers. The rusty brake drums, the odd gears and springs – these Cargo Cult-like objects whose original function, so precise, so ordered, is now unknown – they too honor history; they honor the worker and join in the larger mystery of existence on this Earth.
Artifacts are our true history. Old bricks are dwellings. Broken china is a meal. From roadsides, beaches, paths, and dumps I rescue heads, necks, breasts, etc. in metal, ceramic, and stone.
It’s all about learning to see, not look, to behold and not possess.