Mindseye – Mark di Suvero

Artists’ Statements

For our response, we decided to paint our own interpretations of Mark di Suvero’s work. Down below are each of our works.

“For my interpretive painting, I decided to include a lot of aspects of my initial reaction to the sculpture Mindseye. After inspecting the sculpture, one portion of it stood out to me in particular, and that portion was a piece that had the shape and appearance of a sextant. I wanted to incorporate this into my interpretation and show how when I saw the sculpture, to me, it meant that for what we see around us, our mind is our sextant. We are exposed to all of this stimuli, and our brain is the device that allows us to make sense of it or “navigate” through it. The background of my painting is an ocean, and I wanted to include this because the sculpture is placed in close proximity and is facing the ocean. I found this to deepen the connection to the idea of navigation because sextants were often used as a means of navigating on a boat. In this case, the vast ocean represents the vastness of the world in which we live in and move through.”   -Lauren Kordas

“My initial reaction to our piece, Mindseye, parallels my ideas carefully displayed in my portion of our group project.  Mindseye came off in a creative yet industrialized way to me, this is why I included the structured shapes and objects that I did in my portion.  I also saw the eye of the sculpture to be very important in the interaction the artwork had with its audience, which is why I made sure to include the eye as a major piece of my sector.  Along with these ideas, I wanted to add my own spin on how Mindseye made me feel and why I added the wave looking background to my sector.  The piece made me think of adventuring and traveling oceans because of the map included with the sculpture; this inspired the waves.”   -Allison Rice

“Mark di Suvero’s sculpture, Mindseye, is a masterpiece of metal work. When you view his piece for the first time you see a void space filled with something unexplainable. It looks as if you see an eye with random shapes and objects behind it that spins around, dangling from a sturdy but delicate cable. This is how I saw di Suvero’s piece when I first came across it. It inspired me to create this painting portraying di Suvero’s piece from what I saw with my eyes and envisioned in my mind.”   -Jack Wilson