Nancy Lovendahl - "Mountain 3.0.10 (Shocking Pink)"

Hi I’m Nancy Lovendahl and live on the western slope in Old Snowmass.

You are looking at Mountain 3.0.10 which is part of a series called Small Glimpses, Many Times.  That title comes from Dzogchen, a foundational practice in Buddhism that is a reminder to wake up and be present.  According to Joy Armstrong, who was the curator for the show which came out of this work, I quote “This series also continues a consistent exploration of repetition and consciousness chronicling new developments in my social practice of art.  Depicting the same form over and over again in sculpture offers new ways of seeing and understanding ourselves.  The artist - me -takes the mountain form as a metaphor to explore the difference between the object itself and my concept of it.  With an understanding that all people experience the world though a lens of their own biased perception, the mountain comes to represent all assumptions that can obscure the truth of an experience or person.” End quote.  Thank you, Joy.  Its a relief to have the key concept in this work written about so clearly.  

To put this into context in this particular sculpture, the hot pink resin form is my memory of a mountain outside my studio that I looked at over and over again for 30 years. I know what it looks like, right?   So I carved it from memory.  When I got back to the studio, I put it up next to the actual mountain and it looks absolutely nothing like it! No surprise there.  But its how I really remember Garret Peak.  I’ve put it into a limestone sculpture to conceptually represent that part we all bring with our mental observation of nature or ourselves or other people.  The mountain becomes a personal memory that is constantly changing each time we think about it or see it again.  My hope is that If we contemplate this pattern perhaps the consciousness to question what we think we know will open and bring a renewed perspective about ourselves and how we see the world. 

Thank you for listening.