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SEPTEMBER 14

click on the picture below to see a larger image

VORTEX, 2011,

9x12", Graphite on paper, $5,000

 

KALTENBACH ANNOTATIONS:  This work is from a series started in 1968. They are project drawings for projections of film or slides. They were mostly designed as museum pieces to be projected on walls. In this work I was interested in the shift of the horizontal plane of water 90 degrees to the vertical. 

The maelstrom, from Dutch for 'whirling stream,' actually exists in many places in the oceans of the planet. I've loved this idea since I was a child. I have a faint memory of a story illustration of a giant one with a sailing ship going down in it. The image seems a great metaphor for the bad times in life when things are spinning out of control like a run-away train. Then there is the positive side, the roller coaster or the silent movie baby buggy that gets away from the mom on a steep hill and goes flying down the street through intersections, barely missing cars while the baby screams not in fear but with delight.

Fire on Ice is the one of this series of projections that was not intended to be on a wall. It is the only one that has been realized, a happy event for me which is obvious from the rather big grin on my face during the construction of the ice cube. This piece is in the Marzona sculpture park in Versegnis, Italy. Egidio Marzona owns the work so whenever he decides to show it he hires stone carvers to make it out of blocks of ice using chainsaws. This event happened in November, 2007 which was cold enough so that it lasted until it rained a few days later.