Photograph by George Sakkestad
Artist Shigeo Kawashima of Japan constructs a sculpture made out of strips of bamboo for the 'Inside Outside' display at Montalvo in Saratoga. The exhibit runs through June 16.
Art exhibit is inside, out at Montalvo
Sculptors show their work in gallery, on the grounds
By Shari Kaplan
Although an art gallery is defined by the very walls and floors on which its art hangs or sits, sometimes those confines must be broken, allowing the artwork to spill out and take on a life of its own.
Such is the case at the Montalvo Gallery in Saratoga, which is currently host to Inside Outside, an installation by two very different sculptors: Shigeo Kawashima of Japan, who works in bamboo and natural fibers, and John Ruppert of Maryland, who uses various metals in his works.
Unlike most artists who install art and leave, Kawashima has been staying at Montalvo as an artist-in-residence since April 15. He will be there through April 29. It may take him those two weeks to complete one of his pieces, a 10-foot tall, 22-foot wide sculpture in the shape of a fluidly curving arch, sitting on the Montalvo front lawn. It consists of long canes of locally grown bamboo, tied together in hundreds of places with sturdy twine woven from palm fibers.
"His works completely change your mind about the artistic possibilities of bamboo," says Montalvo Visual Arts Director Michele Rowe-Shields. "We hope to have adults and children here while he's working on the installation. It's a wonderful way for them to gain insight into the creative process."
Kawashima's smaller-scale pieces can be seen inside the gallery. Bridge Over the Future: Unity and Jumping to the Future are about the length of an adult's arm, although they are both constructed in curving, vermiform shapes. The bamboo here is much smaller and more delicate, and the ties are made of cotton thread.
Interested in arts and crafts since childhood, Kawashima said through a translator at Montalvo last week that he took a job making wooden furniture after graduating from high school. He quit two years later, as the job was not interesting or challenging enough. He then traveled around Japan, visiting artisans and craftspeople until he discovered the craft of bamboo basket-making in Beppu, a town on the island of Kyushu.
This interested him very much, he said, so he stayed there, learned the trade, and began making and selling baskets of his own. "But I wouldn't recommend it as a way to make a living," he said, laughing.
As he became familiar with the ins and outs of bamboo, he noticed that sometimes his "mistakes" turned out to be interesting shapes that intrigued him. When he began trying these out on a larger scale, his bamboo sculpture work began, leading him to the site-specific installations he now creates in Japan and the United States. A graduate of the Oita Prefectural Beppu Advanced Technology Academy, he was been exhibiting for more than 20 years.
"Bamboo is mysterious," he said, adding that it would probably take him all day and night to explain all the reasons he loves it. "It's always challenging to get the bamboo to do what I want. Sometimes it is unexpected."
John Ruppert has also exhibited at home and abroad for more than 20 years. He is a professor and chairman of the department of art at the University of Maryland. His work inside the Montalvo Gallery is titled Moon Gourds and Crucible.
The centerpiece is a 9-foot-high chainlink vessel that is narrow at the bottom and opens ever wider as it gets taller. Surrounding it like an irregular solar system are 12 larger-than-life "gourds" cast from aluminum, bronze, iron, copper and zinc. They look fragile yet tough, dense yet ethereal--all at the same time.
On Montalvo's west lawn--a small area dotted with purple-leaf plum trees to the side of the villa--lie three cast-aluminum pumpkins. Part of Ruppert's 1999 Pumpkin Series, they are based on a real 700-pound pumpkin.
"The sagging weight of these gigantic fruits suggests a moment of frozen ripeness, in which each pumpkin exists in a state of both growth and decay," Rowe-Shields explains in Ruppert's absence, as he has already returned to Maryland.
'Inside Outside' runs through June 16. A public reception, including a talk by Kawashima, takes place April 29, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, call 408.961.5813, or visit www.villamontalvo.org on the Internet.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
