A View Through: Sculpture by Tess Cummins
CURATOR'S STATEMENT

Although it can be convincingly argued that all art is intricately and inextricably linked to the process used to create it, Tess Cummins seems to have a particularly close  relationship with the act of making.  In fact, in many and a myriad of ways her work takes as its’ primary subject the creative process as an ongoing improvisation between artist and material.  Considering only the content of Cummins’ sculpture without also addressing her artistic process would present a vastly incomplete understanding of what her art is about.

Like spinning hay into gold, Cummins’ work is created primarily from discarded copper roofing.  Combining wood, copper wire, semi-precious jewels and sometimes leather or fabric with these weathered metallic sheets, she fashions intricate, elegant, muli-layered sculptures meant to lead the viewer on a journey away from the surface world and into the heart of the matter.  Just as there is no one route toward wisdom, knowledge or enlightenment, just as the metaphysical or spiritual world manifests itself a bit differently for each individual, there is more than one way to read these small, stately and poetic sculptures.  You must follow where they urge you to go and learn your own lessons accordingly. 

Cummins creates work with a great deal of humility.  She uses humble materials and employs simple processes done slowly and by hand.  Twisting and snipping, wrapping, pounding, polishing and sanding- these are the techniques she favors.  In a world in love with technology, flash, noise and newness, this alone makes her an iconoclast.  But it is her interest in the universal rather than the personal or political and her quiet dedication to letting the work process lead the way that sets her apart.  Cummins is willing to let her work it evolve as it will, to listen to what it has to say to her as well as what she would like to have it say to the world. Hers is a quiet process requiring time and repetition, not unlike meditation or chanting.  The results are similar as well- multiple layers of images, ideas, symbols and associations gathered together, the natural blending of many into one.

This is not to say that she doesn’t begin with an idea.  In fact, she begins a sculpture with many ideas in mind and then she gathers even more along the way.  Cummins as an artist and a person is a thinker, reader and researcher.  She looks for inspiration and understanding on a daily basis.  Her interest in the work of Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner, in physics, music, Buddhism, reincarnation, Theosophy and philosophy, all find their way into the sculpture by way of the archetypal symbols and images she chooses. Doorways, mirrors, windows, chains, stairs and vessels are all used.  Her reverence for the natural world is expressed in her inclusion of plant, sea and landscape imagery as well.  Dwellings and architecture, as they relate to the human body and to entering and passing from one place to another also figure prominently. 

Both the act and the concept of passing through is central to each series of works presented in this exhibition, hence the title, A View Through.  Her Fort Series, a group of wall works that refer to the ancient practice of posting a potent protective symbol above an entryway in order to trap evil, demonstrates this interest in moving from one metaphorical or metaphysical place to another.  In Bond Fort, a stairway leads to a small dark door set into a weathered copper rectangle.  The rich blackness beyond the door is cloaked in mystery, leading to a place unknown, perhaps unknowable.  Yet the door is indeed open and the path is clear. 

Cummins also employs other devices aside from her more literal use of doors or windows to show the passage from one plane to another.  Draped areas of chain link, for instance, like the ones used in Rain, Eden, or trans.sur.trans, seem to present a scrim or screen through which one can both see and sense that something else may live just beyond the surface.  Even the flatness of the copper sheeting itself creates a layer through which any cutaway creates a void calling out for exploration.  These sculptures, while presenting themselves as common objects made of common materials using common techniques, also demonstrate the transcendental experience that lies at the very heart of creativity.

In conversation Cummins expresses an interest and a reverence for the concept of courage.  Indeed, it does take courage to make art the way she does, listening to the materials and the process, suspending set ideas and ego long enough to let the work lead.  Her efforts have been largely successful.  Like all art that is worth spending more than a little time with, these works reveal themselves slowly, coil by coil, layer by layer, in the age- old dialogue between the artist and the art.

Nancy Sausser

Exhibitions Director

McLean Project for the Arts