Drew Formal Critique

Circumscription by Rad Collier Acton is a medium sized marble sculpture about two feet tall and a foot and a half across in either direction. It is mostly spherical in shape, but this form is made of a single line of grey marble looping through itself three times, almost like a three dimensional Celtic knot. This form is sitting on a marble post of the same material, which is then attached to a short, black, cylindrical, marble pedestal. The marble form is composed of a single block of marble that has been carved to look like a single line that swoops up and back, twisting in on itself and passing through the center of the sculpture three times. The carving is curved on the outside, and straight on the inside, creating the implied form of a sphere.

cir·cum·scrip·tion: The act of drawing a shape around another shape. This title is very telling of this sculpture. The carving is an abstracted form, a knot carved out of a single block of grey marble. It is an implied sphere created around a set of lines. This piece engages it’s space well. It has great positive and negative space, and the knot like form forces the viewer’s eye to trace over the entire piece. It seems like a lot of decisions were made here, about how the form should move around in the space to optimize how it is viewed. The major line of the piece is almost vertical, but it is bisected by a line that curves backward and away from the viewer. These lines then travel around the entire piece. The one problem with this arrangement is that this sculpture is put back into an alcove, so it is impossible to walk all the way around it. This is unfortunate, because it engages space in a way that makes the viewer want to look at it from all angles and figure out how the knot works. It’s size makes in an intimate piece, one that draws viewers in, and the color/texture of the work is inviting as well.