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Buddha with Bird Nest: sculpture

Here's the first version of this sculpture, a steel and bronze Buddha,
supported by the three cylinders of wisdom (perhaps a reference to the
Diamond Sutra scroll books), sitting on a stone. The new version
of this artwork is below, deeper into the thread:







Buddha also appears in my Beautiful Evidence (at page 87)
in the discussion of the Diamond Sutra:



Photographs by Andrei Severny.

-- Edward Tufte


Buddha with Bird Nest: new version of sculpture

On the left: steel, bronze, handmade bird nest.

On the right, 3 steel forgings mounted on steel surface plates.





Here are some stories about this piece:

1. Buddha on the Buddha-mobile.

2. Buddha on a base formed by the three cylinders of wisdom.

3. Buddha was said to meditate so serenely that birds were able to nest in his hair.

4. Buddha is one of the few Dear Leaders that you can place a bird's nest
upon his head and his fundamentalist followers won't try to blow you up.
Thus the piece is a statement about Buddha and Buddhism as well as other
religious belief systems.

5. Buddha visits Egypt (or an Egyptian color palette) in the second picture
immediately above.

6. This Buddha maintains dignity, wholeness, and coherence in the presence
of all these stories.

The 3 blacksmith forgings mounted on surface plates (at right) will probably be
part of the Buddha piece for my New York show.

Buddha with Bird Nest, absent the 3 forgings and surface plates, was shown
at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, June 2009- January 2010.

Photographs by Andrei Severny.

-- Edward Tufte


Early motionless Buddha with bird nest on head


Scenes from the Life of the Buddha, ink and colours on silk,
From Cave 17, Mogao, near Dunhuang, Gansu province,
ChinaTang dynasty, 8th-early 9th century AD, British Museum,
Asia OA 1919,1-1,0.97.

-- Edward Tufte


Buddha at the Dunhuang caves

Note that the illustrations above of the Diamond Sutra printed book/scroll and the silk drawing of Buddha with a bird's nest are both from the amazing Dunhuang Caves in China and are both dated in the 8th-9th century CE.

-- Edward Tufte


This is a serene, yet dynamic Tathagata, riding the rollers of buddha, dharma, and sangha. This Buddha can maneuver in any direction, occupy any point of view. Karma rolls on inexorably, yet he remains tranquil, unperturbed.

-- Marty Manjak (email)




Threads relevant to sculpture:
Ace and Porta do multimedia
Airspaces
Bird Series
Aluminum and stainless steel; many, many pieces moving in the air.
Bouquet sculpture series--and Walking, Seeing, Constructing
Beginning of Bouquet series (now 7); along with theoretical statement beginning the volume 5 project.
Complex sculptural shapes
Dear Leader I: landscape sculpture May 2006
Narrative piece about some mysterious porcelain objects in a stainless steel perspective box.
Dog sculpture (Porta the Portuguese Water Dog)
ET Modern
ET museum/gallery in the Chelsea Art District in New York 2010-2013.
ET show at George Champion Modern Shop
ET gallery show in Woodbury, Connecticut.
Escaping Flatland sculptures
Ten large stainless steel pieces in the landscape generate many views and painted color fields as the sun moves across the sky and the season changes.
Feynman Diagrams, Edward Tufte sculptures and exhibits
The Conceptual and Cognitive Art of Feynman Diagrams. Art show + 16 page essay.
Flame Theater
Georgia O'Keeffe and Escaping Flatland
Hogpen Hill #1: sculpture installed August 2006
First major piece (24 feet light, stainless steel) installed in new 122 acre sculpture park underway in Woodbury, Connecticut.
Ironstone artworks, torqued steel
Magritte's Smile
Masks Quartet, 2011
bronze casting
Megaliths, Continuous and Silent, Stuctures of Unknown Significance
Stone+air artworks. Scuplture, megaliths
Millstone sculpture series
Massive industrial pieces sorting out circles and light. Redesigning and repurposing scrap from nuclear power plant.
Multiplicity in visual experiences (ET presentation for a museum show)
Nine reviews of ET's Aldrich Museum sculpture show
ET museum show in Connecticut 2009-2010

Open-Ended
Paradox sculptures
Petals 1-3
Aluminum hyperbolic paraboloids in the landscape reflect light and shadow. The pieces move with the contour of the land.
Philosophical Diamond Signs
Philosophical alerts, imperatives, and thoughts about the path past and future.
Rocket Science
~32 feet (10 m) high and ~72 feet (22 m) long, and is constructed from ~48,000 pounds (22,000 kg) of rusting scrap steel
Rocket Science #2 (Lunar Lander)
Rocket Science 3: Airstream Interplanetary Explorer
Sculpture Forgings
Steel forging mounted on wood base. Blacksmithing video.
Sculpture: Negative space studies
Three table pieces; strong positive elements create active negative volumes (the air) to torque. Movies.
Seeing Around: New ET essay published
Skewed Machine
Spring Arcs, an ET landscape sculpture
Four solid stainless steel arcs in the landscape. Long thread, many photographs on meaning, construction, viewing of the piece.
Stainless steel images: anisotropic calligraphy
Big series of engraved 3D anisomorphic images that move with light.
Steel sculptures
Rough, thick, rusting steel, with surface images in the steel's patina.
Table sculptures
About a dozen major table pieces in wood, steel, stainless steel.
The Drawing Center fax show: ET exhibits
The Twigs: Landscape artworks made from steel and air
The beautiful Twig. Steel, 32 feet high, with accompanying thread on reading the piece and the complexities of modeling large 3D objects.
Theater Museum artworks
Tong Bird of Paradise
Towers: a new memorial for 9/11
Visual complexities of light, shadow, perpsective. Perforated stainless steel.
ZZ Smile (Zerlina's Smile)


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