Ursula von Rydingsvard in "Ecology" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD:
My work is so labor intensive that often

I'm doing things that are highly repetitive

in order to get to the end of 
the piece or of the project.

It's actually pretty easy to have an image,

but to realize it is a deep deal.

Often when you're in the 
process of realizing an image,

it's going somewhere else.

If that tangent starts going off in 
a place that feels more exciting,

that's what I go with.

I grew up as one of seven children

in the post-World War II refugee 
camps for Polish people in Germany.

My parents were extraordinary survivors,

and my home was one in which 
words were not used very often,

and in fact anybody that used too 
many words was automatically suspect.

I drank from the world through visual means.

That was a huge source of the 
information by which I lived.

I learned you smile but you ration that.

You laugh, but not very frequently,

and really at appropriate times.

And that working hard was the answer to life.

I almost think of it as the way 
that the Shakers might live.

We stayed in wooden barracks,

raw wooden floors, raw wooden walls

and raw wooden ceilings so

somewhere in my blood I'm 
dipping into that source.

I build everything out of cedar.

Very neutral. Almost like a piece of paper.

When we build the sculpture, 
we build it layer by layer.

I draw the outside lines of each 
of the pieces that you see here.

The cutters cut them.

We put them back here.

We then mark it precisely.

On the outside--you see some 
of these marks on the outside?

And on the inside, on the top portions these marks

are actually the most precise of all

so that if any one of these pieces 
were to be tossed or to be lost,

we could find them and put 
them back where they belong.

We build it and screw it all together.

And then we take it off layer by layer by layer

in order to glue it layer by layer.

The cutters by the way are 
the princes of my studio.

There are cutters who cut lyrically,

there are cutters who cut very aggressively,

and depending on what I need, that's who I use.

In order to make an organic form you 
need to have many, many straight cuts.

The surface is a kind of landscape 
that I get carried away with.

My definition of a landscape 
that could also have to do with

the kind of psychological landscape 
or an emotional landscape.

Graphite is a very, very fine 
powder and because it's so fine,

it's able to get into the pores of the cedar.

I really put it on in a very hefty way so that

I really grind it with a brush into the surface.

And then we scoured the surface to further define

what I wanted the surface to do

because that surface is extremely important to me

in terms of communicating emotionally.

I never do a model–

I never do drawings for my works–

because they close me in.

Because they limit my options.

You can't get too predictable.

You have to have surprises all over the place.

If for nothing else, then 
just to keep my head going–

keep my mind alive.

But I think to have any level of interest

you have to have some sort of combat, you know,

that's occurring within the work.

And anger has been a tremendous 
mobilizing force for me.

I'm grateful to my anger.

The confrontation in part lies 
with my struggle with the cedar.

It's always telling me what it needs to do

and I think that I'm trying to 
tell it what I want it to do.

This is a sculpture that I want 
to look as though it's ravaged.

As though it's been kind of beaten up by life.

Anything that has to do with chaos is as 
interesting if not more so than order.

This is a machine that's meant only 
for metal to grind on top of wood

and what it does is it burns its surface.

For me, that's what gives it a whole 
other landscape and a whole other depth.

Mine are definitely not utilitarian objects

but I learned from that which is vernacular.

I consider these my drawings.

They are three-dimensional but 
they're actually quite complicated

in terms of all of the markings on their surface.

This is chalk and that's graphite.

It's made out of wood--out of cedar, obviously–

but it's still lace because it 
wanders in a way that's very wayward

and it's very open.

You can see through it.

I deliberately, consciously,

set out to make it feel and look light.

I love the man-made and nature kind of 
really becoming fused or becoming one.

For the project at Madison Square Park,

the urethane bonnet, I wanted a transparent look–

a look of walls that the light went through.

I wanted a very agitated surface and the hood that 
is over the bonnet is almost like a little porch.

It's very erratic and it's very celebratory

and it needed that translucency of the light.

I think there were twelve marriages 
that took place inside the bonnet.

Certainly that part of the 
piece was a big success.

I do have books that I've written in.

I use this as a way to talk to myself

and I write down my dreams,

documenting them is one of the 
things that makes me feel lighter.

I draw because it's something that 
I like to do from time to time.

I've never shown my drawings–

I'm very shy about my drawings.

They really are mine.

I can't help but think right now that

maybe the best drawings are the 
ones that I leave for a while.

Let it gestate because as time goes by

I think it becomes more and more obvious.

This particular drawing I've 
worked on for I think over a year.

It's almost like a patchwork quilt you know?

And I think of these things not really as sewing,

maybe as cuts that the surgeon then sews later.

I think of them as a kind of landscape 
that you look at from the top.

This piece is the most baroque 
piece that I've done in my life.

It's also the kind of landscape 
you find on a human body.

The interiors of these pouches 
had a tremendous amount to do with

defining what the exterior does.

I want people to enjoy the 
voluptuousness of the piece.

I want the piece to walk with them.

I feel that anchoring these 
structures and anchoring these forms

is a part of the power behind how it speaks.

Gravity serves an incredibly 
important purpose for me.

This wall pocket has a flat, flat back

because it actually can edge up against a wall.

There's kind of a humbleness to it.

There's almost an introverted feel that it has.

I need the inside to be as 
carefully considered as the outside.

And I have this idea of almost like 
something that would–

you know, almost like something that a body could excavate from.

You know, could sort of be 
molded with and then escape from.

My whole cedar studio is loaded 
with pieces that are unfinished

and I need all of those things 
in my environment to feed me,

to give me always options.

Nothing can exist in my head without opposites.

The opposites don't have to be complete opposites,

but they can be things that 
don't ordinarily belong together.

Within a piece that has tremendous 
amount of agitation and agony,

there can also be something very hushed

and very quiet and very lyrical and very humane–

also within the context of something that 
feels as though it's full of violence.

That within it one can have 
something that feels humble

and that feels as though it's capable 
of giving you a "głaskać po głowie" –

the capacity of petting you on the 
head in a most gentle sort of way.