Circumscribing Beauty, One Eye at a Time

I was pleased to be selected as a Winner of the Hammond Museum Art Competition, with my proposal for this performance.

My goal was to explore ways of looking at the visual world.  So, I asked visitors to the museum’s stroll garden to make a viewing circle with their fingers.  Then, they were to find a beautiful sight within their viewing circle and describe it to me.  I used my fingers to locate the sight they were describing.  Inevitably, their description would include the naming of specific objects, such as a lily pad on the pond or a small bush or a flowering tree.  I proceeded to describe the same sight using only the elements of art — line, shape, color, form, and texture as seen within a circular compositional format.

This process led to interesting discussions on a whole range of topics.