Artist Lecture: Ann Weber : Craft, Art and Life 1980-2014

Lecture at Sacramento State University on February 27, 2014

Ann Weber, the artist whose lecture I attended, is interested in creating larger-than-life abstract forms that she constructs from cardboard strips using a stapler.  She was inspired by Viola Fray so she went to the school that she was teaching at at the time.  She started attending art school in 1970.  She was interested at that time in making and selling functional pottery, or production wear.  

In 1985 she came to California where all the interesting pottery was being made.  It was the end of an era- people were making unique work to exhibit in galleries, instead of just functional objects.  She did not know where to start with this whole idea of creative pottery, so she would make production wear like plates and bowls, and she squished them to make something abstract but interesting to the eye.  She used red, white and black to paint them because those colors had meaning and were powerful.  She looked at other work and suddenly had a breakthrough.  

One of her philosophies that she acquired from Viola was "Save the best part of yourself for making your own work."  Another quote that she lives by from Viola is, "You're a beginning artist the first ten years out of school."  This is very true, and I have a feeling I will start living by these words of wisdom as well.

She began with her mentor Viola's process.  She would sculpt, then draw what she sculpted, and by then it had changed 15 percent.  

She wanted work that was easisly transportable and non-fragile, so she started using cardboard instead of plaster.  She would make drawings instead of creating, that way she would take up less space.  She cast some of them in bronze (after soaking in wax) to make them harder and stronger.  The cardboard being bare and naked before though was more pleasing to her.  So she went away with this bronze and wax process.  (She would only bronze them or construct them out of steel if it was a permanent installation in a gallery or somewhere it needed to last forever).  See one of her steel works below:

Her studio burned down eventually, and she lost ten years of her work.  She tells us that the art profession is full of disappointment and work, and a lot of money.  I know already, and I am only 23, that she is NOT joking.  

She went on to tell us about some individual pieces and what they meant to her and where her inspiration came from.  One piece, called "Enough is Not Enough" (left), was influenced by the Maidu tribe's baskets (I learned about them in my Native American Art class and they make very tiny to very large baskets with their bare hands and natural tools from their land).  It really is quite amazing, I have seen them in the Downtown Sacramento Native American Art Museum.

Another piece that quite inspired me, because of the idea process more than anything, is "Marie Antoinette" (right).  She could not find any blank, white cardboard boxes to cut up, so she was forced to use color.  This was her introduction to a new world and would use color from now on.  She found a large mushroom outside one day that blew her mind because of its size.  She started to make a replica of it, and it turned out to look more like a woman, or Marie Antoinette, in her eyes.

I really loved her idea of how she made "Float and Sting" (left).  This piece functioned off the idea of floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee, but to me they actually resemble bees fluttering around the beehive.

She had traveled to Rome and picked up influence and inspiration there from a little romance there, as well as the infinite amount of sculpture that covered every inch of everywhere she went.  She used Rome as her muse, and she is still creating work inspired by their sculpture, such as the angel wings and the beautiful drapery she saw on several statues.  

In this image (right) you can see how she likes to mimic shapes that inspire her.  She told us that you can find inspiration anywhere, that our lives are so full of the most valuable precious meanings that we can never possibly be lacking of inspiration- it is just a matter of looking closely at your life and what is around you.