Art on the Radio

Welcome to Art on the Radio with Derek and Michael. Each week at this time we describe to our listening audience important works of contemporary art. Our word paintings (as we like to call them) enable the listeners to form a mental image of the art without having to actually pick up one of those big heavy art books or going to all the bother of visiting a museum. And in the process of translating purely visual sensations into verbal descriptions I actually transform the original art into an entirely different form of communication. This act of creative metamorphosis becomes, in effect, a work of art in its own right!

Wow! That's great - I bet the grants came rolling in when you told the foundations about your vision.

Well, Michael, we're here, aren't we?

Heh, heh, we certainly are, Michael! So, what are we describing to our radio audience this week?

This week we have trucked into the studio a piece of monumental earth sculpture generously loaned to us by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis Minnesota. This meticulously reconstructed oeuvre consists of several tons of clean land fill mixed with found objects, gravel and cedar chips. Michael, visually speaking, what in the heck is going on here?

Derek, what we have here is a monolithic mound of fuliginous earth material which is designed and yet not designed, but suggesting nonetheless forgotten relics from a lost civilization. Other surfaces, created from clumps of debris haphazardly strewn about have a haunting verisimilitude to extinct life forms.

Hmmm.... I guess I would describe the piece as having an imposing yet playful internal architecture whose external variations in texture imply a profound irony which challenges the viewer, or in this case, the listener, to step back and ask, Why?

I couldn't have said it better myself, Derek. So, that's it for this week's program. I hope you all will join us when we once again bring you Art on the Radio!

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