STATEMENT
My relationship with Brooklyn's low-rise neighborhoods and Manhattan’s grandeur and bustle runs deep.
The construction and deconstruction of the urban environment brings its incessant cycle of ruin and renewal to my doorstep daily. A broken bottle in the street catches the same light as the church mosaic above, the cast-off and the revered. Ideas about urban sanctuary and sacred geometry stir a lifelong interest in religious architecture. I look and think through an archaeological lens. Memory and the inscribed line is the demarcation of the present moment.
For many years, I painted directly from perception; from still life to street scenes, bridges, and boats. Then I made a break into abstraction and developed a language of pouring and scraping, building up planes, shapes and structures. Found scrap materials from city streets started to show up in the work, first collaged onto wood panels with cement and latex paint; then as small scale Assemblage sculptures, now in the freestanding sculptures I am engaged with currently. This work uses deliberate clashes of found objects, paint, city detritus, and other materials as flashpoints for personal struggle and social crisis. While my focus has turned to sculpture, I still maintain a drawing practice directly from architectural sources around me, an engagement which continues to fuel my creative spirit.
For me the sculptures directly represent the self in life; entangled emotions, desires and gestures are rendered in metal, wrapped in cables, colored with broken glass. Here my fascination with city construction sites, arcs and spirals, angles and overall geometry has found new expression. Constructed by hand from found glass and metal, concrete patch, latex paint, wire and wood, they reflect parallel threads and interweave naturally to contain contrasting structures in space, texture, rhythm, and an emotion-based physicality. With this unruly new work I am asking for something specific for my city and for my time.
Carol Diamond
New York City
My relationship with Brooklyn's low-rise neighborhoods and Manhattan’s grandeur and bustle runs deep.
The construction and deconstruction of the urban environment brings its incessant cycle of ruin and renewal to my doorstep daily. A broken bottle in the street catches the same light as the church mosaic above, the cast-off and the revered. Ideas about urban sanctuary and sacred geometry stir a lifelong interest in religious architecture. I look and think through an archaeological lens. Memory and the inscribed line is the demarcation of the present moment.
For many years, I painted directly from perception; from still life to street scenes, bridges, and boats. Then I made a break into abstraction and developed a language of pouring and scraping, building up planes, shapes and structures. Found scrap materials from city streets started to show up in the work, first collaged onto wood panels with cement and latex paint; then as small scale Assemblage sculptures, now in the freestanding sculptures I am engaged with currently. This work uses deliberate clashes of found objects, paint, city detritus, and other materials as flashpoints for personal struggle and social crisis. While my focus has turned to sculpture, I still maintain a drawing practice directly from architectural sources around me, an engagement which continues to fuel my creative spirit.
For me the sculptures directly represent the self in life; entangled emotions, desires and gestures are rendered in metal, wrapped in cables, colored with broken glass. Here my fascination with city construction sites, arcs and spirals, angles and overall geometry has found new expression. Constructed by hand from found glass and metal, concrete patch, latex paint, wire and wood, they reflect parallel threads and interweave naturally to contain contrasting structures in space, texture, rhythm, and an emotion-based physicality. With this unruly new work I am asking for something specific for my city and for my time.
Carol Diamond
New York City