ART EXPLORES
LIFE
Sculptor Virginia Folkestad
deals with the conceptual
By BONNIE MCCUNE
Photography KIMBERLY DAWN
Art imitates life" is an adage, an old saying. But in the case of sculptor Virginia Folkestad, "art explores life" is closer to the truth.
She investigates not only the realities of the physical world around us but also the ideas that lead to and spring from our relationships to that world.
Art that focuses on ideas and the process of creation is known as "conceptual art," giving priority to the basic thought of a work's content. Virginia Folkestad is the epitome of an artist who deals with the conceptual.
Stroll through one of her installations of highly crafted building-like objects, or peer at a wedding of steel and thread, and you'll get the idea. In fact, you'll likely get a number of ideas, for there's something resonant, echoing the familiar, about her approach. Maybe it's the detail that goes into each piece, the woodcrafting, the polishing, the welding par excellence.
On the other hand, there's something disconcerting, unusual and hypnotic, too. For who's ever seen a model of what appears to be a tiny house perched eight feet high on a derrick-like structure? Makes you think.
That's exactly what Folkestad invites us to do when she embarks on one of her creations. She's exploring life and the world around her through her art. And she wants us to come along for the trip, too.
Does a viewer need to know precisely what she intended when she created a piece? Not at all. "It doesn't matter if they get what I intended," she says. "But (it matters) if they look." Does art exist without the viewer, she wonders in a philosophical frame of mind. Obviously the answer is "no." Just as art must have a creator, it must have an audience.
Folkestad enjoys the freewheeling discussions that her work initiates. "People will stand and try to figure out what you're trying to say," she explains. "They bring their own history." Some pieces remind people of their personal stories, and they begin to talk about those thoughts.
"Some people love it (her work) and don't know why. Some will never get it," she says without rancor. "Brains work differently." Three-dimensional art is "in your face, in your space," so most viewers will at least pause to consider.
Still the impetus for her art frequently springs from things she knows — the domestic, nature, man-made edifices. From there, the possibilities cascade.
A certain material might catch her fancy, the way a metal reflects light, the pliability of wax, a piece of thread's ability to float in the air. She might be drawn to unusual combinations or approaches that don't occur in the normal use of a substance, such as woven wire.
Perhaps she'll see an object that brings to mind a concept. A steel-reinforced piece of concrete can be a metaphor for the structures that underlie our society. For Folkestad, eventually a work of art must be a mixture of concept, form, materials and expression. She considers herself a risktaker, attempting uses and approaches that are unusual. She needs to change and challenge her materials. Determination also plays a big role, for without that quality, that spark, she would not be driven to see a piece finished in spite of many failures on the road to completion.
Folkestad's journey to become a sculptor is as fascinating as the ideas she expresses in her art. Although visual expression was an interest throughout her early life, encompassing classes in her initial go-round in two years of college, she shelved a major concentration on art in favor of becoming a mother four times over. Still she couldn't quite suppress the urge totally. Weaving caught her attention — an avocation that can be practiced as children crawl and play around a loom.
As she talks, her explanation of her life's process sounds organic, with each realization about her calling evolving naturally out of the preceding stage. "It's totally about your life process," she explains about her voyage to sculpting. "Some people are faster learners or are exposed to things earlier." For Folkestad, the development took time.
Questions about where the rest of her life might be headed brought her to seek career counseling. By all indications, auto mechanics should be good for her, she learned. Hmmm. Was there a germ of truth in this advice? Was she drawn to the tangible, the physical, the threedimensional? What did she really enjoy about weaving — constructing the looms or tedious hours bent over them? The self-knowledge began to dawn.
Fortunately, at the same time Folkestad was considering these matters, she had reenrolled in college art classes at Metropolitan State College of Denver. There, adjunct faculty and mentors encouraged her to lay hands on sculpture, but a certain specialization within sculpture — contemporary art. That meant no bronzed figures of mothers rocking children or cowboys riding bucking broncos. Instead the rarified, exhilarating if challenging forefront of the field, where abstract commingles with installation. "You can always read a society by looking at contemporary art," she says.
Five years passed before she obtained her degree, and during this time, her persona as an artist was kept separate, autonomous. "As a woman working in a creative field, you may need to be cognizant of the way people can categorize you," she advises. She hopes the situation is better for women now than during her struggle to establish herself. People didn't expect her type of work from a woman or from an artist her age.
So the relative anonymity of the Denver location, distant from her home in Castle Rock, and the support of mentors proved to be life changing.
After graduation, Folkestad was invited to become a member of two alternative galleries, Spark and Edge. Alternative galleries are strong in Denver, and they nourish new and beginning artists, not only by exposing them to the public, but also by enabling them to create a body of work. At this time, much of her focus was on installations, pieces created for a specific, temporary location.
The learning process continued. One stint included a residency at Vermont Studio Center, a location for mixed disciplines and practitioners from other countries. This in turn led to three shows in Slovakia, with two American and one Slovakian artist, in which the trio were welcomed with bouquets of flowers, an "opening" in the truest sense of the word (the doors to the gallery literally swung open to strains of music), and people requesting autographs on the exhibition catalog. This also helped focus her in the direction of objects that can be exhibited in more than one location, rather than installations, because, as she points out, the shipping rates for huge and heavy pieces of sculpture are exorbitant.
Although she had learned to weld in college, she's picked up a number of additional skills along the way: a blacksmithing course at a crafts school in North Carolina, woodworking and her current class in botanical drawing at the Denver Botanic Gardens. She's also picked up handfuls of awards and grants — two scholarships at the famed Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, an artist fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts, a residency at Dorland Mountain Art Colony in Temecula, Calif., a best gallery show (solo) from Westword, a juror's award from Dearing Galleries in Taos, N.M., to name a few.
While grants and fellowships provide validation for artists, along with seed money for expenses, they do not equate with income. "If you want to push the envelope, you can't do that and make money," Folkestad asserts. Compounding the challenge is our society's view of any given field. "Our society has a winner, and the rest are runners-up," she says. An American Idol approach to success.
That's not what validates Folkestad. "I'm not through," she emphasizes, "at any age ... it's about being creative, creative as you can be." The creation of art can be painful as you shift, think, try what will work.
But, she continues, "Art is endless, what you can learn, (how you can) touch base with who you are."
Folkestad is represented by and exhibits at Sandy Carson Gallery, along with other selected venues across the nation. She feels it's important to participate in any opportunity to show her work.
"The value of art is it can start a dialogue," she says. "It enables people from different backgrounds to relate. Visual art reaches some other level of communication than words." As she continues her exploration of art and life, she invites us to accompany her.
