If you go
What: “Circles” exhibit by Bradford Hansen-Smith
When: through Jan. 30
Where: The Arts Center Gallery, 115 2nd St. SW, Jamestown
Admission: free
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Contact: 251-2496 or http://jamestownarts.com
Grand Forks-based artist Bradford Hansen-Smith worked for years as a sculptor before an experiential project that involving folding circles changed his direction.
Now, he’s creating geometric art from circles using cross-disciplinary techniques.
This required changing his approach to art from one of creation to observation to allow the subject to unfold on its own, he said. Even then the tendency is to still to allow inspiration to cloud observation which can confuse the process, he said.
“When I retraced my steps I would find a point where I made a decision to make a circle do what I wanted to do rather than observe what it was doing,” Hansen-Smith said. “I think about the world today and how that is our problem.”
Art from squares, such as origami, is often about cutting or folding to force a shape from the square, he said. A circle has geometric shape but has largely remained a two-dimensional object when it comes to art, he said.
When a circle is folded it is transformed. The art is to observe and explore the nature of the circle and where the symmetry of movement takes the artist.
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“It’s basically a process of folding the paper in half and then looking for information,” Hansen-Smith said. “It has taken me a long time to adjust to a process where I take information generated in folding and consistently use that to know what to do next.”
Folding circles encompases math, geometry, art and science but it can be explained in artistic terms, he said. Folding paper produces a frequency of shapes not unlike the geometrical figures discovered in making fractal math, he said.
“The more creases, the more triangles and the more complex the things you can do with a single circle,” he said.
Hansen-Smith said his greatest joy is working with students. When children start folding they produce things that still surprise him after 30 years, he said.
“I don't want them to learn how to fold to do what I know but I expose them to a process they can use to discover what is in the self,” he said.
The father of one student contacted him and wanted to know about what he was teaching the kids, he said. He was a chemist and said his son brought home shapes that were identical to the tetrahedron shapes he worked with daily, he said.
“This is how children can do something in a way they hadn’t thought about and open up something in a way they haven't seen before,” Hansen-Smith said.
The folding technique doesn’t require advanced math, he said. It’s simply folding and using tape, glue or bobby pins to hold the work together, he said.
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The Arts Center Gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
