For Immediate Release
August 28, 2002
Contact: Brent Sverdloff 781/259-3628, bsverdloff@decordova.org
Sarah Smith 781/259-3663, ssmith@decordova.org
DeCordova Announces the Third Annual Rappaport Prize Winner: Lars-Erik Fisk
The Rappaport Prize is an annual award made possible by funding from the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation, and administered by the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, to an individual artist in recognition of his or her significant achievement and creative potential.
Lincoln, MA-The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation are proud to announce this year's recipient of the largest public annual award to an individual artist in Massachusetts. The $20,000 one-year stipend will be awarded to Lars-Erik Fisk-a 31-year-old Vermont-based sculptor whose mixed media artworks reshape such linear and angular objects as roadways, machinery, and architecture into perfect spheres. The prize will be awarded at the Museum's Annual Fall Meeting of Trustees and Overseers on Tuesday, September 24.
About Lars-Erik Fisk
Since 1995, Lars-Erik Fisk has been turning out artworks in the form of a sphere, a shape he calls a "basic form, one that we can all understand, but is at the same time the least likely form for these subjects to assume. In combining the dissimilar, I want to find how we might recognize something by seeing it for what it is not." Using whatever organic and manmade materials are required to produce the traditional construction upon which a particular form is based, Fisk compacts the salient functional and distinctive features of the original into a concise and humorous ball in order to render it universally accessible.
Not unlike Jasper John's method of deconstructing such everyday objects as maps and flags, Fisk sees expediency in his reduction of vastly disparate objects into orbs. "I wanted a system," he says. "I wanted to strip away the responsibilities of choosing a form each time, so that the form became uniform." With great success, Fisk has managed to capture the essential formal qualities of such immediately recognizable twentieth-century icons as a UPS truck, a school bus, and a Volkswagen-and reduce them to a spherical essence. The effect is at first jolting, yet the objects retain their integrity and identity; doors and windows often remain operational. Even the road these vehicles travel on-black asphalt marked with solid yellow and dotted white lines-has been condensed into a sphere in Street Ball, thus achieving equal status with its motorized counterparts.
Fisk studied studio art and art history at the University of Vermont, spending one semester in Rome. His works have been exhibited at the Firehouse Gallery in Burlington, VT; the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, NH; The Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Burlington, VT; the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, MA; Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY; and Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, MN. His works currently appear on display at DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA; The Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Burlington, VT; and the Horst M. Rechelbacher Sculpture Garden in Osceola, WI. Fisk has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine; Sculpture Space in Utica, NY; the Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, MA; Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY; and Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, MN.
At DeCordova, Fisk created the DeCordova Ball specifically for the Museum's 1999 exhibition On the Ball: The Sphere in Contemporary Sculpture. As is characteristic of most of Fisk's work, the DeCordova Ball is intended for outdoor display. It abstracts and complements the idiosyncratic architecture of the Museum by referencing the red brick exterior, arched window form, and slate turret. The structure of the ball is comprised of a steel support skeleton, which was covered with a layer of concrete and then coated in wet clay. Once dry, the bricks were individually cut by the artist, fired in a kiln as factory brick, then mortared permanently into place. Situated on the slope adjacent to the Museum stairway, the DeCordova Ball may be viewed from various perspectives and interacts with both the interior and exterior of the Museum building.
Fisk credits his experience at DeCordova with inspiring him to take into greater consideration the natural and regional setting of his sculptures to come. His John Deere Ball-bright green and yellow and crafted from actual tractor equipment-was displayed in a rural mid-western environment in Minnesota. In the near future, this very sculpture is also slated for atypical indoor display in a hotel room in Miami Beach amid masses of imported hay. The rather crudely named Slum Ball-a consolidation of a formerly dignified housing structure reduced to a hovel, complete with walled-up windows-was situated on a hillside across the East River from Manhattan.
An interesting side note to Fisk's career has been his role as Art Director for the rock band Phish. The band's management office was located near Fisk's studio in Vermont. The band's enormous cult popularity could attract upwards of 70,000 fans to a concert, and Fisk's job was to create what he terms "environmental installations," which physically and psychologically transformed vast, empty spaces into a welcoming and intriguing gathering place. In one case, he dug ponds for an Americanized Chinese garden; in another, he built whimsical structures that implied escapes from reality and forays into domesticity.
An itinerant artist for the last two years-in order to save on studio expenses, he opted to work out of a van-Fisk looks forward to putting down roots for a while and setting up a studio with the proceeds from the Rappaport Prize. "I'm excited by the entirely new set of options that a fixed studio will afford me in terms of raw space and an open stretch of time to take on new experiments-outside of the Ball series."
About the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation and Prize
The Rappaport Prize was established by the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation to foster two goals: (1) to recognize both the achievement and potential of an artist who has already demonstrated significant creativity and vision, and (2) to encourage the artist to continue in a career of art making despite the ever present challenges which such a choice confronts. Choosing a career in the visual arts today requires courage and sacrifice-courage in the sense that there are few guarantees of success in the arts, and even if "success" (however it is measured in the visual arts) is obtained, it cannot always ensure a livelihood. Sacrifice is also a requisite for the artist to remain committed to the long-term process of developing truly creative new work.
The Rappaport Prize is administered by the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and conforms to the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation's mission to encourage leadership in specific sectors of the community. DeCordova has attained a significant leadership position as the largest, most dynamic museum of contemporary American art in New England and serves as a national model for institutional involvement within the community.
There is no formal application process. The selection of the Rappaport Prize artist recipient is made by DeCordova's Director and Curatorial staff. A Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation Trustee may also assist in the selection process in an advisory capacity.
The only condition of acceptance by the artist is that DeCordova receive a work of art by the Rappaport Prize recipient. This acquisition will be added to the Museum's permanent collection, which comprises 2,200 artworks largely by New England artists. The acquisition will further serve to enhance the artist's career profile and the mutually beneficial artist/museum relationship. Selection of the work will be negotiated with the Museum's curators and is subject to DeCordova's formal process of acquisition. Accession of the work of art will carry the credit of the Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation, which makes the acquisition possible through the establishment of the Prize and its stipend to the artist.
General Museum Information
The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park is a museum of modern and contemporary American art with a particular emphasis on the work of New England artists. It features the only public sculpture park of its kind in New England and the largest non-degree granting studio art program in the state. DeCordova opened in 1950 on the former estate of Julian de Cordova, a Boston entrepreneur and supporter of the arts.
DeCordova Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm and on selected Monday holidays. Admission is $6 per person, $4 for senior citizens, students, and youth ages 6-12. Children age 5 and under, Lincoln residents, and Active Duty Military Personnel and their dependents are admitted free. The Sculpture Park is open year round during daylight hours and is free. The Store @ DeCordova and the School Gallery are open Monday through Thursday, 9:30 am to 7:30 pm, Friday through Saturday, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, and Sunday 11:30 am to 5:30 pm. The Café @ DeCordova is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 am to 3 pm. Free guided public tours of the Museum's main galleries take place every Wednesday and Sunday at 2 pm. Free tours of the Sculpture Park are given on Saturday and Sunday at 1 pm from May to October. Visit www.decordova.org or call 781/259-8355 for further information.
