Joan Winter featured on modernhouston.net

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featured artist
Joan Winter

more information:

Peel Gallery
4411 Montrose Blvd
Houston, TX 77006
www.peelgallery.org
713.520.8122

Counterpoint represents a new departure for this Dallas based artist.
Commenting on the exhibition title, Winter states, “…Counterpoint
(as in music) refers to the relationship of two or more voices that are
independent in contour and rhythm, although interdependent in
harmony…” Her definition mirrors one that can be found in a Webster’s
dictionary, counterpoint, defined as, “Use of contrast or interplay of elements
in a work of art”. The key words, as they apply to her sculptures and prints,
are rhythm and interplay. The exquisite beauty of this exhibition is a
testament to the consummate craftsmanship evident in each sculpture
and print, and a result of her playful articulation of a simple form.

Winter describes the dominant form used in her works in this exhibition, as a
curved bean. It is an unusual form, rarely used in art, and alludes to natural,
organic things like seeds or pods, as well as obscure mechanical parts, perhaps,
like a flange or sprocket. But as well as the individual curved bean forms,
Winter focuses upon their interaction. how they intermingle and move through
light and space. As sculpture, the curved bean is formed in resin and wood.
Counterpoint Three is a cast resin work of transparent shapes, each one
pinned to its adjoining neighbor and assuming a slightly different tilt,
which when placed on a base creates an illusion of an arrested rocking
motion. Light plays over the surface and through their voids, creating
patterns of overlapping shadows

Counterpouint Three

Having worked in the field
of Architecture, Winter has a
great love of Japanese
architecture, and her fabrication
of wood forms, and even
the boxes she builds to hold
the molds for her cast resins
are impeccably crafted.
Although small to mid-sized,
her sculptures feel perfectly
scaled. Illumination also plays
its part, surrounding the shell
of the curved bean form,
and penetrating its void in light
and shadow. Winter is a
fabricator of diverse materials
and idiosyncratic forms that
define spaces within as well
as outside their contours.

Push Slate

Inspiration for Counterpoint came in what Winter describes as dance
movements in a box of light and shadow. The work is her reaction to
Push, a performance by the Sadler’s Wells dance ensemble in New York
in 2005. This series of solos and duets were performed on an empty stage,
accompanied only by lighting and guitar music. Winter was fascinated
by the measured movements of the dances and how light and shadow
weaved patterns around the bodies of the intertwined dancers. Winter
has titled the prints chosen for this exhibit after the individual dances
from Push.

Ambi-Flux

What Joan Winter leaves for us in her exhibit Counterpoint, are sculptures
that capture the elusive nature of natural light, and prints, whose
illusionary nature present forms that intermingle with their shadows.

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