Ellen Harrington, John Milodragovich, Riley Begin, Annie Kim

The Flank of Western

Mia Westerlund Roosen, Flank II 1978

From a first glance, it is hard to discern what Mia Westerlund’s intentions were with this sculpture. Mia’s sculpting style is essentially random and spontaneous to the point in which it makes it hard on the viewer to comprehend the given purpose of her pieces. But that is the beauty of her sculptures, her emotions and purpose of the piece can change at any given time. To understand this sculpture that was made in 1978, you must understand the artist during that time and take that into consideration while interpreting what the original intent was.

Mia Westerlund Roosen was born in 1942 in New York with a Cuban heritage. She chose the path of an artist over being a dancer; however, a significant amount of her work is influenced by dance and movement. Westerlund Roosen is an artist that is known for her outdoor sculptures. Her sculptures often refers to the body, its sexulality, and its flow. She emerged as a sculptor during the late 1960s. She creates work that is full of wit and sensuality. Her works are usually not literal, yet they are interpretive and quite abstract. Westerlund Roosen has received several awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1988 and a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Creative Arts in 1993.

Her works can be seen in many places but she is mostly known for creating sculptures all over New York, her hometown. Many of them are displayed at the Betty Cuningham Gallery. She has made over 50 different sculptures in a wide variety of materials. Some of her works have included materials such as cotton, ceramic, marble, felt, copper, concrete and many more. Her older pieces mainly utilized natural colors like ivory or gray. But in her most recent works she has started experimenting with a wider range of colors such as red, orange and blue. One example would be a sculpture she released in 2010 called, “Blue Madonna”, that was created with blue organic material. She has also collaborated with her son, Eric in 2007. They created a sculpture with running water called “Mettawee”. They created this piece with material that is being used to build hotels and other buildings today. Such as foam and plasticized concrete that doesn’t crack when it’s moved. Her son introduced this new technique that she has continued to use over the years.

Flank II was created in 1978. Westerlund Roosen started to rise as a sculptor in the late 1960s. This was the time period when Minimalism was the dominate, artistic movement.

Locally, in New York, where Mia Westerlund was living, the time period of 1978 was a terrific interval. It was a time when many people, especially young and creative people, were flowing back into the cities, and the preoccupation of the suburbs were peaking. Art began to become a topic of conversations: theater, magazines, photography, movies, etc. The city was also very cheap; thus many activities were highly affordable and the people of New York were busy and having fun. Internationally, the year of 1978 was full of many events. To name a few, on January 23, Sweden became the first nation in the world to ban aerosol sprays due to the belief that it was damaging the earth’s ozone layer. On September 16, 25,000 people died in a 7.7 earthquake in Tabar, Iran. Additionally, on November 6, Shah of Iran placed Iran under military rule, and general Gholan Reza Azhari formed a government.

In the 1970s, the growing feminist movement in America fostered a wave of feminist art. Many of Roosen’s works are sensual and evoke parts or movements of the human body, two themes central to feminist art of this era. The 1970s saw the rise of Post Minimalism, art that’s influenced by Minimalism or uses Minimalism as a reference point. (4) In 1989, the New York Times referred to Roosen’s sculptures as “shapes that would be Minimalist had they been fabricated at a factory rather than modeled, poured, cast, beaten and soldered by the sculptor.” (1)

Some of Roosen’s work also contains elements of Land art, in the way her sculptures generate a sense of mass, and sometimes evoke geographic features (her “Mountain Series,” for example), and in the basic, terrestrial materials from which they are made: stone, concrete, molten metals.

Flank II, created in 1978, fits most with the trends of post minimalism and land art, although it is inherently feminist in that it was created by a female sculptor while the established art world was (and still is) dominated by men. Flank II’s triangular shape evokes a kind of simplified mountain range, and the long fissure that dominates its most prominent face is reminiscent of some kind of geographic calamity. The concrete base is dark and rock-like. The copper coating on top has been allowed to oxidize, creating a natural patina with an imperfect and raw look to it.

Credits:

Video shot and edited by Riley Begin

Research done by Ellen Harrington, John Milodragovich, Riley Begin, Annie Kim

Song used in video: Lovers Carvings by Bibio