Changing Perspectives

Study #1

soapstone

6 3/4"h x 6 1/4" x 7"

$2,000

Artist's Notes

Changing Perspectives 2004

This new series was born on the autumn wind 2003 when I discovered the inner perspectives of Whole Forms in the photographs I was constantly taking of the show. A trip to Aruba, Nov 2003 added to this growing concept of interior perspectives when I visited some parks on the island where enormous boulders sat stranded in the middle of this relatively flat island. The interior of these giants were water carved into beautiful shapes.

As I began to work in January, organic forms kept evolving from the Plasticine studies. The more I took away the more interesting the piece became and the interiors pulled me into their private spaces. I made more than a dozen maquettes and had the feel for the forms to be made from stone.

I directly carved the images and found another element of which I was unaware at the maquette stage. The images were to have no top or bottom, but could be manipulated by the viewer to have different orientations....perspectives. Each shift of the piece provides new images....top becomes bottom, north becomes south, or southwest as the orientation shifts at irregular angles.

The premise of the series seeks to galvanize that moment in time when a change in perspective releases rigid thought, and frees the individual to create something new.

Carol Mackay Mertz

September, 2004

March 2005

I have lived with Study #1 for about a year now. It keeps revealing new concepts, both broader and deeper, AND/OR I am expanding in consciousness and knowledge and I can see more in the piece than I first saw.

Initially as the viewer shifts the perspective of the piece, the first image, whichever it was, has disappeared and a new image replaces it. They experience each view as a new view and cannot see the other view they have just experienced. They cannot even see where in this second view the first view resided. Because they intellectually and physically hold all views in their hands, this leads them to contemplate that ideas they may hold as stable and unchanging might have interior depths and exterior surfaces they had not seen before. This builds upon the visceral experience of the moment of the shift in perspective.

With extended contemplation the viewer gets to experience the piece in a new way. When the image is turned, they realize they can follow a line or a particular feature into the new perspective and can see the same line or feature in the new image and see, of course, where the line lived in the first image. This begins to allow the viewer to see many perspectives from one orientation...to start to take in the whole of the piece visually.

Then when the piece is held and manipulated, the viewer starts to see how one perspective flows into another, and how that one flows into the next, and so on and so forth until they can see the entire piece as one flowing image. They also realize that any orientation can be revisited without destroying or losing a given perspective, and that each perspective relies upon another to express its form.

Touching is an important experiential aspect of this art form. Touching assures and reveals wholeness in form...in the palm of your hand. Conceptually holding all of the views in one holon...turning it and seeing how one perspective flows into another, is to realize that all life, objects, ideas, spirit are in constant motion. The stone conveys the exciting promise that even though you hold this holon in your hands, it contains more ideas of which you are as yet unable to grasp. Even though you cannot understand all it has to reveal, its promise is that it will be there to examine when you are able to make a broader meaning.

carol mackay mertz

March 7, 2005

Interiors of Giant Boulders on Aruba, November 2003

Inner perspectives of Flow from Whole Forms.

Interiors of Giant Boulders on Aruba, November 2003

Study #2

alabaster

5 1/2"h x 8 1/2" x 5 1/4"

$500

Artist's Notes

Study #3

This study may be another series along the same lines as studies #1 & #2.. There are five components to the piece, so the possiblities explode.

in the personal collection of

Kara Banigan and Greg Mertz

soapstone, 2004

Study #4

This study is made from a black and white alabaster. It has three components which expand the possiblities for the viewer.

Like studies one and two, the portal element surfaces once again in the large open window. If we can change the perspective of the pieces, can we not also change the dimension from which we see life?

These openings seem to ask the viewer to peer into other dimensions which exist right alongside our every day consciousness.

8 1/2"h x 7 1/2" x 2 1/4"

7" x 2" x 5 1/2"

5 1/4" x 1" x 1/2"

alabaster, 2004

$550

Home Page

The Flower Stone

The Flower Stone was a commission by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fairfax.

It's evolution as a commission is published on the Commissions page. While it was tailored to meet the needs of the congregation, it is also a continuation of this series,

Changing Perspectives.

Japanese Wonderstone

2004