Paul Van Lith

“Votive Landscape,” by Paul Van Lith, is a new piece completed especially for the Sixth Annual Cloverdale Sculpture Exhibit in our plaza this summer. In a reversal of our expectations, the figure is horizontal, and follows the planes and contours of the landscapes seen all around us, while the abstract elements of the base become the figures in those landscapes. As with much of the finest art, we are challenged to look around us in a new way.  

“Votive Landscape” is formed from plaster, wood, stucco and concrete – “materials as old as some of my inspirations” Van Lith told us. “I have combined them here with the love I have for modern art.  These materials are good at give and take. The rewards are wonderful but they exact a price.” He went on to explain – “with plaster, you have to see what you are doing and do it, as it quickly sets rock hard. Wood is alive and responds to the environment. Concrete is concrete, and it does what it wants to do. I try to make the accidents happen in my favor. Each piece, in some way, remembers the past, from the simple triangle or zigzag ornamentation which is present in almost all archaic cultures, to the primitive methods of positive mold making I employ to cast the concrete. The sculptures talk about what it can mean to be human, both past and present, seeing Praxiteles and Brancusi with the same eyes.”