Art@Site www.artatsite.com Athena Tacha Connections Philadelphia
Artist:

Athena Tacha

Title:

Connections

Year:
1992
Adress:
Matthias Baldwin Park
Website:
invitation
A lot in this world is squared and symmetric. I have to admit: this is often very beautiful.
However, it is often predictable: everything you once have seen is exactly repeated in the same space. That gives you peace of mind. Often, this is also important. But how would it be like to give up control, to find the unpredictable, creative, funny, unexpected the most important thing?
Howerver, it also looks dead many times: everything lives side by side, without interaction, without forming the whole thing. The peace as a result, is also important. How would it be if we found it important to be open, to live together on top, below, next to each other?
Then the community would look like Connections by Athena Tacha.
We see plants, flowers, flower beds, pathways. We cannot see on this picture the interaction between flowers and insects, the interaction between (the leaves of) trees and ground cover, playing children in different seasons of the year. Also we cannot hear birds, smell flowers, feel the grass at our feet.
May I invite you?
By Theo, www.artatsite.com

Vertaling
uitnodiging
Veel van onze wereld is vierkant en symmetrisch. Ik geef toe: dat is vaak héél mooi.
Maar het is ook vaak voorspelbaar: alles wat je ééns hebt gezien, wordt in dezelfde ruimte exact herhaald. Dat geeft rust. Dat is ook vaak belangrijk. Maar hoe zou het zijn om de controle los te laten, om het onvoorspelbare, creatieve, vrolijke, onverwachtse het belangrijkste te vinden?
Maar het is ook vaak doods: alles leeft naast elkaar, zonder interactie, zonder dat het geheel wordt gevormd. De rust dat hiervan het gevolg is, is ook belangrijk. Hoe zou het zijn als we het belangrijk vinden om open te staan, om levendig boven, onder, naast elkaar samen te leven?
Dan zou de samenleving er uitzien als Connections van Athena Tacha.
We zien planten, bloemen, borders, straten. Wat we op deze afbeelding niet zien is de interactie tussen bloemen en insecten, interactie tussen (bladeren van) bomen en bodembedekkers, spelende kinderen in de verschillende seizoenen door het jaar. Ook horen wij geen vogels, wij ruiken geen bloemen, wij voelen geen gras aan onze voeten.
Mag ik je uitnodigen?
Door Theo, www.artatsite.com

www.associationforpublicart.org:
The visualization of this rhythmic pattern came from a reading on modern physics where subatomic particles were being described as materialization points of energy ...

www.associationforpublicart.org:
As described by the artist, 'the terraced planters, rising only at half-foot intervals from the north to allow better sun-exposure…form a gently stepped, irregular pyramidal mound. The curves of all terraces converge at nine round clusters of large rocks, which function as nodes for the rhythmic pulsation of the forms. The visualization of this rhythmic pattern came from a reading on modern physics where subatomic particles were being described as materialization points of energy, appearing and disappearing, connected to each other through flows of energy.'

www.wikiwand.com:
One of the first artists to develop environmental site-specific sculpture in the early 1970s, Tacha has won over fifty competitions for permanent public art commissions, of nearly forty have been executed throughout the U.S. One of these public works was a two-acre sculptural landscape in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania entitled "Connections," within Matthias Baldwin Park.
She has had six one-artist shows in New York—at the Zabriskie Gallery, the Max Hutchinson Gallery, Franklin Furnace, the Foundation for Hellenic Studies, and the Kouros Gallery—and has exhibited in numerous group shows throughout the world, including the Venice Biennale. She produced a body of textual and photographic conceptual works and poetic studies, many of which were published as artist's books.

www.associationforpublicart.org:
The public artwork can be seen from a variety of perspectives including from above through a number of high rises surrounding the site as well as on the street, which is both physically and visually connected to Franklin Town Boulevard.

www.artpapers.org:
I teach my sculpture students how to deal with the natural environment, the urban environment, the architectural environment, and how to do sculpture in relation to the environment. And all the work I do as a sculptor is in that vein, both for permanent works in pu spaces—plazas, fountains, etc.—and in the interior works, like this temporary installation for the show at the High Museum. The form of the work could not exist until I came here to be with the space; it was inspired by the architecture of Meier’s building. You know, the white material, the paper, playing against the other white material of the building, the transparency of the paper and the openness of the structure responding to the architecture but at the same time trying to create a form that is much more sculptural than architectural. Forming space and reshaping the space in which I was doing the installation.
Since most of my work deals with nature as an inspiration, that work also comes from images of nature— stalagmites, stalactites, cloud formations, soap bubbles, foam. Last summer, I photographed the foam forming behind a boat, and all that bubbly, chaotic form is in my mind while I try to shape this paper. I’m very interested in forms that don’t look as if they have a structure, buve a formal structure behind that chaotic appearance. The paper, when it’s crumpled, looks like a mess, but there are very beautiful forms in it. Different people here in the museum crumpled paper for me, and each of them has a style of crumpling that creates different forms. So the human body is always involved in my work one way or another.
And then there is another aspect of my work, here represented primarily by the series of massacre memorials. The forms are inspired primarily by natural events, but the content of the work is human catastrophes, like massacres of civilian populations, or whole populations that have been repressed over the centuries. This particular series has the four major civilian massacres of my lifetime—the Jewish Holocaust; the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki bombing; the destruction of three million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—that is not to the American soldiers that were killed in Vietnam but to the civilian populations that were killed there. I also realize that there ar, there are also the Stalin killings, which I haven’t dealt with yet. I have to become acquainted with a cause and feel strongly about it, but also I choose causes that other people feel strongly about. There is also, of course, South Africa, that I made the memorial to—it’s not just killings, it’s the struggle against oppressing a whole population. That’s not in this show because it’s newer work. I have made a memorial to women as a group that has been suppressed over millennia.

www.wikiwand.com:
Athena Tacha (Born in Larissa, Greece, 1936-), is a multimedia visual artist. She is best known for her work in the fields of environmental public sculpture and conceptual art. She also worked in a wide array of materials including stone, brick, steel, water, plants, and L.E.D. lighting. photography, film, and artists’ books. Tacha's work focused on personal narratives, and often plays with geom