Visitors to New York’s Park Avenue, Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Denver Airport, Downtown Miami or Seattle Center delight in the public art that distinguishes each location.
Now, thanks to nationally recognized sculptor, Charles (Chuck) Ginnever, Clarinda has joined such metropolitan sites as a community where contemporary art offers citizens stimulation and diversion from their daily lives.
Seven of Ginnever’s sculptures now grace the streets of Clarinda and citizens are encouraged to get an up close and personal look at each one. The works are on long-term loan from the artist and from the Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum Collection.
In conjunction with the public art, CCAM is presenting Charles (Chuck) Ginnever: Folded Forms, an exhibition that explores the artist’s career and the development of ideas underlying his sculptures, drawings and prints. The exhibition will open on June 24, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and will run through December 3, 2018.
To get maximum enjoyment from Ginnever’s sculptures, viewers must explore them from every direction. The effort pays off, because as one circles these works, glimpses of birds, airplanes and figures materialize, then fade. Some works have windows that challenge viewers’ ideas about perspective and how we, as Americans, look at objects. Others, despite their one-ton heft, seem as though they are capable of taking flight.
As visitors encounter Ginnever’s early drawings and prints, they will recognize that the artist is naturally prone to consider his subject matter from every angle– from the air, from below, or from any side.
In fact, as Ginnever continued to develop his creative skills, he eliminated the concept of vantage point altogether. His masterwork, titled Rashomon, can sit on any of 15 different sides. Viewing up to 15 identical works placed in these various positions – as visitors to the exhibition will – one would never suspect they are seeing the same form.
Along with the Ginnever exhibition, CCAM has collaborated with Anne Kohs & Associates of Portola Valley, Calif., on the publication of a 103-page, hardcover, color catalogue, GINNEVER: Complexities of Minimalism. A debt of gratitude goes to Ginnever’s longtime representative, Gayle Maxon-Edgerton, of Santa Fe, N.M. and CCAM founders Karen and Robert Duncan, without whom these projects would not have been possible.
