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F E E L I N G
An Interview with Ann Christopher
It was our privilege to speak with Ann Christopher about her work, and to learn more about her processes and inspirations. Her precise aesthetic vision is remarkable within her vast exploration of media, and whether in bronze or in pencil, her mastery of line, light, and movement is evident. The intense presence that her works have seems to be fostered by careful balance — between exacting lineation and soft textural detail; the contemporary and ancient; and between figurative stimulus and abstract expression. Rosenberg & Co.
Your sculptures feel so certain and distilled — utterly complete in themselves — that they can give the impression of having always existed. An encounter with your sculpture inspires deep contemplation. How do you know when a work is finished? Between conception to completion, what are key elements of your process? Conception starts in my head — a sense of shape, a feeling about size. Often mock-ups are made in card to play with scale. There may be a technical stage to work out how something will actually be made, because the larger the sculpture is, the more an inner structure or armature is required. The process from then on can vary from frenzied bouts of work to apparently inactive times of consideration — working out what move to make next. There are also “magic times” when the work itself dictates how it wants to be perceived. That sounds a bit mysterious but it really can happen. The work is finished when it stops looking as if something is missing — when it ceases to look “wrong.”
That’s a wonderful articulation of completing a work. When you begin a work, what instigates your choice of medium — whether it is pastel, pencil, bronze, or steel? Which metal I chose to cast in depends on what colour I want the final sculpture to be: bronze is much more accepting of different surface treatments than stainless steel. The choice of pastel versus pencil again is to do with colour, but also the type of mark I wish to make — I choose the pencil and crayons when more precise lines are required.
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