Interstice

Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson is a Sarasota-based sculptor and instructor at Ringling School of Art and Design. His work is in many private, corporate and museum collections including Coca Cola Company in Atlanta, Ga.; Kohler Company Arts in Industry Collection, Sheyboygan, Wisconsin; John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, Ga.; the University of South Dakota Permanent Collection, Vermillion, South Dakota; and Woodlot Gallery in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. A major work, Woman Asleep, was installed at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Clearwater, Florida in 1995. It was one of the first works acquired for their outdoor sculpture collection, which includes many nationally prominent sculptors. This work was the only sculpture from the museum collection sited in the recently published Art Lovers Guide to Florida, by Anne Jeffery and Aletta Dreller.

Anderson ’s work combines intense realism with a rigorous formal design. It is in the tradition of humanist realism that goes back to the Quattrocento and yet is absolutely contemporary in its structure. His work resonates with people at many levels and appeals to a wide range of audiences. He works within a tradition and attempt to extend that tradition. Even at its most abstract, his work has always been representational and his recent work is even more so. The emphasis in the work may be perceived as traditional, biological, nurturing, protective. In turn the full twisting rhythms may be perceived as aggressive, generating a sense of power and purposeful awareness that gives an assertion of identity and personal control. The late Henry Geldzahler, former curator of Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art said of this work, " Mark Anderson's bronze castings are among the most accomplished works in the show. Greek art and mythology combine with the work of Germaine Richier, Reg Butler and the American Rueben Nakian in his moving handsome sculptures. They perfectly balance representation and abstraction while emphasizing our origins in animal nature."  

ARTIST STATEMENT

My sculpture is becoming simpler, more compact, more concerned with simple surfaces and elements of interaction and meaning. The relationships between the simple forms of the extremities of the body, hand and foot, hand in hand, head and hand, or head and foot. These relationships are what currently interest me. These are the parts of the body that I left off in my work of the early and mid 1990's. They are, for the most part, more open to speculation, less open to gender bias given that they are less gender specific. Perhaps they are more like still life in their nature. Randall Jarrell wanted his work to be in the plain American that cats and dogs speak. I want to move toward that deceptive simplicity.

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND