Linda Molenaar
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Residency: March – April 2015
Project Description
At Sculpture Space I worked on a problem that I had sent in a box from The Netherlands and had to solve it. The box contained miniature perfume bottles packages and about 1,000 piano hammers (and more materials that I did not end up using during my residency).
This problem worked out quite well, as I may say. I knew Utica would not have these kinds of materials easily available. I was feeling trapped, but happy at the same time with these materials. Trusting on my own gut feeling and wanting to create sculptures, I just needed to solve my dilemma using these materials.
The miniature perfume bottles packages where like a warm-up exercise and joyful to play around with, which I think you can see that in Perfume Bottles and Torsos. I cut the perfume packages into smaller pieces, dividing the pieces by color to form arrangements. I am not used of working with artificial colors and definitely not 2-D, so that was a nice challenge for me. I had never worked with a stapler before and it made me explore new techniques, so I even dared to go 3-D with the cardboard. I think perfume is so connected to the physical body that the only option, for me, was to create a male and female torso.
The weight of the hammers was slowly developing into an idea, which unfortunately does not translate very well in English. The Dutch call a grand piano “a wing” and I thought dividing the hammers in 3 made them look like little feathers. Since it’s all natural materials I was sold to this idea (I had while taking a shower) of using the piano hammers to create Grand Wing. Along the way, some rearrangements needed to be made which was quite confronting at times, but that is the beauty of an artistic process – you never really know what way it will go. Putting your ego and willingness to work aside, back off and letting time pass by helps me listen to what the work is saying. Putting the love in the work reflects back to the audience.
Sculpture Space has been perfect for working in this way, which is a blessing as an artist. I got so much work done being with just my materials and myself and it is not often that you get a chance to see how important that is. My time at Sculpture Space was like a reset for me, having the time to get into research and reflecting how my work has developed over time. My Grand Wing will remind you and myself of that freedom.
About the Artist
Linda Molenaar lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She received her BA in Sculpture from the Constantijn Huygens Art Academy, Kampen, and her Master of Theatre from DasArts – Amsterdam School of The Arts.
She has been awarded residencies around the world, including Skowhegan, I-Park, Yatoo Nature Art (South Korea), Kunst Biotope (Denmark), and Ålvik – Kunstnerhuset Messen (Norway). Future residencies include Art Omi and Kjerringøy Landart Biennale in Norway.
After about 10 years of working as a sculptor, she decided to become a part of her work, which mainly explores the animal-human relationship as a theme and often uses natural materials.
Molenaar states “What I would like to show in my work is not entertainment or reactionism, but stillness. I am often quite literally in the work itself, but the viewer doesn’t have direct contact with me personally. My objective is to confront the viewer with the notion of human in relationship to, or with, an animal.”