Alisa Dworsky

InterSpace is a temporary installation for the Art Prospect festival

created by Alisa Dworsky and Danny Sagan

located at 31 First Ave, Montpelier, Vermont

On Exhibit October 15-18, 2020

for more info on the festival www.artprospect.org

During this time of Covid-19, we’ve been conducting most of our activities within our homes. The question of this era: how can we establish a connection to our community, to the outside world, from within the confines of our dwellings? Our Installation “Interface” is a video record of materials and objects from within our house, projected onto fabric-skinned tetrahedral forms located on our front porch. The triangular fabric surfaces of the installation amplify and fragment the images from within the dwelling. We organize the sequence of objects in a loose chronology that follows our engagements with the spaces of our home throughout the day.

In any period, particularly in the age of pandemic and social distancing, the front porch serves as an interface between the private realm of an individual or family and their community. It is the space of dialogue between the private and the public. For this reason, we are locating our installation, “Interspace”, on our wooden porch in Northern New England.

Our intervention is a structure of five-foot-long wood dowels connected as tetrahedrons with surfaces of stretched nylon fabric, forms reminiscent of kites, solar sails, and geodesic domes. The primary feeling is one of lightness which contrasts with the traditional design of the neo-classical porch. In the placement of this multi-surface installation, our goal is to engage the viewer strolling by, acknowledge their shifting viewpoints as they move through space.

The opportunity to create this installation in Vermont, as part of an international exhibition, is a direct outcome of the pandemic crisis. This year, the Art Prospect Festival, which typically is located in St Petersburg, Russia is now including artists and sites throughout the world. The artworks in this exhibition are presented both in-situ, through a website, and artists are connected through on-line based discussions .

This installation was exhibited at the Cynthia Reeves Gallery in 2018.

The installation is made from a series of tetrahedrons, regular polyhedrons made of four connected triangular planes.  Inspired by tent and kite construction, the tetrahedrons are made of dowels and tensile fabric panels assembled with lightweight connectors. The triangle and the tetrahedron are remarkably efficient and strong forms,  forms that are the basis of the visionary work of the engineer, environmentalist and designer Buckminster Fuller. I am interested in how one can build light forms that compact and ship efficiently and yet deploy to activate and define a space by expanding when assembled. The repetition and reorientation of the fabric covered forms suggest multiple readings such as shelter and vessel.

The "Quarry" and the "Warp" series of watercolor and graphite drawings on paper are based on the experience of watching the performance of “The Quarry Project” Develop over several years. I attended several rehearsals and three of the performances…creating the watercolor sketches on the final performance that I attended. Hannah Dennison, Director and Choreographer of this project created a site specific dance performance with over 20 dancers, musicians and technicians on floating platforms in a Quarry in Barre Vermont. The relationship between the dancers and the site particularly interests me…the colors of their grey robes echoing the granite at the beginning of the work. As the performance proceeded dancers shed these garments to reveal reds, magentas, rusts and gold which reflected in the waters of the Quarry.

My “Warp” drawings are the beginning of a series , started in 2023, in response to this experience and sketches of the Quarry Project. I am interested in the idea of resonance, reflection, and echo as interpreted in drawings and expressed in Hannah’s work. Hannah Dennision has invited me as part of a group exhibition of the Quarry Project with these drawings - final venue and dates are in process.

The drawings are made with a rubbing technique using graphite, Colored pencil, colored watercolor pencil and  various different kinds of ribbon.

This seventy foot long textile installation connected to the facade of the Brattleboro Museum was  constructed in performance by collaborating choreographers Candice Salyers and Dahlia Nayar . This Artwork integrates installation, weaving and dance to create structures that focus attention on the human body as the source of built order. In a radical transformation of the maypole dance, the dancers function collectively as a loom to create a series of five textile forms organized as a sequence moving from left to right. This project focuses on rhythm, repetition, density and time duration as common ground relevant to diverse artistic disciplines.

This installation was  performed on May 9, 2015 at the Brattleboro Museum, Brattleboro Vermont to correspond with an exhibition of textile art  inside the Museum, curated by Mara Williams. The installation and exhibition remain on view through June 21, 2015.

polyester grosgrain ribbon, carabiners, hardware.

This project is supported in part with grants from A.R.T Fund of the Berkshire Taconic Foundation , The Arts Endowment Fund of the  Vermont Community Foundation, the Vermont Arts Council. the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

Printmaking informs my approach to drawing. With recent works, I use a graphite frottage method, pressure applied to transfer the qualities of an object to the surface of the page.With the color images I use colored pencil in addition to graphite to make these drawings. In the  “Fold” series I shift lengths of ribbon beneath the page as I work. These drawings are simultaneously representational and abstract, static and dynamic. Embedded in the two-dimensional drawings are qualities of three-dimensional space and material.

Designed and constructed by Alisa Dworsky and Danny Sagan, this Table is made from locally harvested Maple, Concrete, Tempered Glass, Delrin Laser cut Plastic and Steel Hardware. It is 33” X 47” X 16”.

Exhibited at The Bennington Museum, Bennington Vermont Nov-Dec 2018 in the group show “Peace Love Harmony: 1960’s Vermont”.

Special Thanks to Paul Wallich at Local 64 for his help working with us to prototype and cut the Delrin Plastic components.

We have chosen to make a table that uses “live-edge” pieces of maple saplings, joined by hubs of advanced plastics shaped with a laser cutter, to form a space-frame structure. Our goal is to express what we call “Rustic Tech”, in recognition that as Vermont designers working in the 21stcentury we have access to both digital rapid prototyping systems and to an abundance of natural materials. We live and work at the intersection of high-tech and the pastoral and our work expresses these inherent qualities of place. 

 This table embodies several qualities that define the ethos of design in Vermont in the 1960’s. Buckminster Fuller’s innovations like the octet truss and the Montreal Unisphere made space-frames a common occurrence in the architecture of the 1960s. The predominate signifier of the Rustic during that era has been the use of wood with “Live-Edge” seen most famously in the work of the furniture maker George Nakashima. At Prickley Mountain In Warren Vermont these sensibilities were integrated into the design-build movement that flourished there. Space frames were integrated into Hosford and Simpson’s OPTOR housing proposal while Sellers and others contrasted tree structures and live edge wood forms with Plexiglass curved windows and solar water heaters.

This is a textile installation by Alisa Dworsky. The work was constructed in performance by three dancers including contributing choreographer Heather Bryce. A radical reinterpretation of the maypole dance, This artwork integrates weaving and dance to form a tensile structure that defines a space with linear elements and is experienced as a drawing created over time in three-dimensions. Trees on the green of the Vermont College of Fine Arts support the ribbon structure that is based on radial forms. The textile installation remained on exhibit through July 22 following the performance. (“Over and Under” is supported in part by The A.R.T fund of the Berkshire Taconic Foundation, The Arts Endowment Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, the Vermont Arts Council, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.)

These animations were created in conjunction with the creation of some of my graphite ribbon  drawings. I am interested in how drawing can express movement. These initial videos are short experiments in capturing the movement embedded in the process of creating a drawing. Adding marks using a rubbing technique and removal of marks through erasure are integral to the process.

Inspired by tent and kite construction, a series of tetrahedrons are made of dowels and tensile fabric panels assembled with lightweight connectors. The repetition of this shape, varied in its enclosure and orientation, creates a crystalline landscape. The experience of this installation changes with time of day.

rip stop nylon, wood dowels, plastic tubing, hardware.
9' x 20' x 30'

Commissioned by the Lexington Art League, Lexington Kentucky for the  exhibit On Site.
May 24 - July 14, 2013

These are Graphite drawings.

With a Nod to John cage I make these drawings within a set of rules.I place a metal nut in the center of the paper. I hit the nut with a hammer. It jumps. I follow it. I repeat until the nut jumps off the page. I use  graphite paper and handmade color transfer paper  as a layer between the paper and the nut.

Commissioned as a response to the poem Soledad by Miriam Sagan, this installation builds on themes in the poem: darkness transitioning to light, enclosure and gravity giving way to space and the imagination. The chevron forms are lightweight structures influenced by tent and kite construction. Incised with the text of the poem, the steel plates on the floor anchor taut ribbons that give shape to the fabric wall forms.

rip-stop nylon, birch dowels, grommets, ribbon, steel
25' x 30' x 8'

516 Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico in the exhibit Time Pieces: Wendover Landing, curated by Miriam Sagan.
May 26 - August 1, 2012

 561 Arts  Time Pieces Wendover Landing  Exhibit

Soledad

reading in bed

in the little trailer

at the edge of town

a crescent moon

hangs

over millions of acres

of darkness

desert sunrise--

Venus, burnished...

and everything

I don't understand

and all of

desire

rolls towards me

like the waves

of a primeval sea.

- Poem by Miriam Sagan

I created these drawings while a fellow at Yaddo in  Saratoga Springs NY  in the winter of 2015.  The drawings are made with a rubbing technique using graphite and  various different kinds of ribbon.

As a selected finalist, I was invited to develop a proposal for "The Saffron Project" ,  commissioned by Burlington City Arts as part of a larger exhibition with the theme watershed. Excerpt from my proposal follows.

"The theme of “Watershed” speaks to the connection between smaller water systems and larger bodies of water, a model of the interconnectivity between local and global systems and events. Climate change is transforming weather patterns, leading to increased incidences of flooding and rising sea levels. These changes lead to displacement amongst populations locally and around the world.

I propose to place series of forms that suggest a flotilla of boats, beached and tumbled onto land. The forms are made of open steel frames and stretched fabric.  When upright, oriented as a vessel, these forms read as boats. When inverted, the forms suggest tents or shelters. This installation acknowledges the theme’s relevance to a local condition (Lake Champlain) while invoking the larger global context of rising water levels and refugee displacement.

This installation is made from a series of tetrahedrons, ideal solids made of four connected triangular planes. Each form in this installation is composed of a bundle of four open frame tetrahedrons made of steel rods. Fabric is stretched across three tetrahedrons within each form while an additional tetrahedrons provides support. I am interested in how the repetition of a shape, varied in its assembly and orientation, can evoke a range of associations.

The triangle and the tetrahedron are remarkably efficient and strong shapes, shapes that are the basis of the visionary work engineer and designer Buckminster Fuller. Many of the themes that Fuller was concerned with resonate with this work. Fuller promoted “ephemeralization” by which he meant doing more with less and upcycling waste. He promoted “synergetics”, looking at a whole system to predict outcomes. Fuller was an early advocate for energy awareness, and sustainability. He believed that the analytic geometry of the universe was based on tetrahedrons."

These drawings are influenced by my experience in printmaking. Printmaking makes use of a variable surface to control the quality and placement of marks. The drawings in this series are made by hammering a single steel nut into paper. The nut is re-placed after each impact. At the final stage a graphite stick is drawn across this varied surface of the paper.

Graphite on Paper, 7” X 7”

This series of drawings was created by making rubbings of strands of ribbon placed beneath the paper. Erasure is also used to create these drawings.

This proposed site specific artwork, ( created in response to an invitation from Fidelity to create a design for an installation), is composed of three hand crocheted forms made of marine rope, ranging from 8’ 8” to 9’ 9” in height . The forms are custom designed and fabricated to be mounted on trees in a plaza adjoining the Fidelity office building at 245 Summer Street. This work presents a reinterpretation of Brancusi’s endless column through the use of crochet techniques, a craft tradition associated with the “female “ arts, here executed with bold color, rugged marine rope and at large scale. A technique once used to create domestic embellishments, is here deployed to transform marine rope, manufactured in New England for the fishing and boating industries of the region, into a work of art. This work further references the origins of the column as a symbolic form that symbolizes the axis Mundi as well as the human figure and the tree which historically have inspired and shaped this most fundamental of architectural forms. The classical tradition evokes the figure (the maiden associated with the Corinthian order) as inspiration for the shape of columns . This is most explicitly expressed by the caryatids in Greek temples whose forms are draped by fabric.

The suspended lead weights are connected to the woven volume by satin ribbons strung through a series of carabiners. The tensile force created by the weights is diverted to pull on the right side of the woven form, shaping that structure.

ribbon, lead, carabiner, hardware
dimensions variable

Exhibited in Flat / Not Flat at Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut.
curated by Jeff bergman, Associate Director at Pace Prints
December 8,  2013 - January 25,  2014

Atlas: Jeff Bergman on Flat/Not Flat

These drawings are made as rubbings (frottage) of botanical selections: leaves, petals, and butterfly wings. These drawings are at an experimental stage; I consider them studies. I am interested in the patterns and symmetries generated. This series explores the tension between nature and order. The drawings range in size from 12" X 12" to 6" X 6".

This work makes use of what is traditionally a lace making technique while suggesting computer drawings and topographical maps. The dimensionality of this work is in flux; the pulleys and counterweights (sacks filled with river stones) invert the force of gravity, pulling this two dimensional composition upward, through tension, into the realm of three dimensions.

hand crocheted polyester rope, river stones, carabiners

Burlington City Arts Center, Burlington, Vermont
Alisa Dworsky: Drawing Strength
January 7 - March 5, 2011

This project is supported in part with a grant from the Arts Endowment Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation.

Link to BCA Center Exhibit

This series of drawings is influenced by printmaking; the paper is treated much like a plate. A metal tool is used to draw the white lines in the image by compressing the paper. Graphite, rubbed over the surface, exposes these relief lines in contrast to the dark field.

graphite on paper, 12" x 9" image
on 22" x 15" paper

These prints are made from multiple registrations of various zinc plates which I prepared using a soft ground technique. A fine nylon cord was used to make marks in the soft ground prior to exposing the plate to acid. Many of the prints use ghost and offset impressions.

multiple registration intaglio print using softground technique

9" x 9" image on 19" x 15" paper

This installation fills the gallery with a network of bamboo lengths arranged in a series of forms based on the tetrahedron. The white stripes on the bamboo suggest movement and echo the dashed lines in architectural drawings. Viewers wearing headlamps illuminate the reflective blue tape mounted with a laser level on the bamboo structure and the trees in the adjoining park.

bamboo, reflective tape, plastic tubing, hardware

Burlington City Arts Center, Burlington, Vermont
January 7 - March 5, 2011

This installation was funded in part with a grant from the Arts Endowment Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation.

Link to BCA Center Exhibit

Many of the lines in these prints are defined by areas of an aquatint plate that are without tone, creating negative spaces that allow the color of a previous aquatint registration to read through. Other lines are made as positive marks using sugar lift combined with aquatint.

Multiplate color aquatint,  Larger : 12" x 9" image on 22" x 15" paper, Smaller 4.5" X 9" on 11" X 15 paper.

The headlights of the viewer's cars make this temporary installation visible. Its appearance changes with traffic patterns and light conditions. two sets of patterns are arranged in counterpoint to each other and to the topography of the landscape. Fields of green reflectors arranged in grids play against blue reflectors lines that run north and south. LEDs are placed at the beginning of the installation facing both the westbound and eastbound lanes of traffic.

Route 4, near Castleton, Vermont.
Fall 2001

Created with support from the Vermont Agency of Transportation, the Vermont Community Foundation, The Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

A hand crocheted yellow room is placed in contrast to the rectangular hard space of the exhibition room. The crocheted room is soft, oval in plan, flexible, sagging, colorful, permeable, small and supported entirely in tension. Strands of rope emerge from the top of the crocheted form. Each line passes through two pulleys suspended from the ceiling to a counterweight that hovers above the floor. This tensile system is the structural and conceptual inverse of the common strategy of supporting a building on columns of compression. One moves around the tensile room to view a series of drawings that echo the qualities of the crocheted forms.

hand crocheted polypropylene rope, pulleys, rocks, drawings

This work as been exhibited in two locations:

Fabrications by Cynthia Reeve Projects at Newport Mills, New Hampshire.
June 26 - September 25, 2010

Brattleboro Museum, Brattleboro, Vermont.
December 1, 2007 - March 22, 2008

This project was supported by a grant from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In this series, yellow quarter-inch polyester rope is placed beneath the paper and a rubbing is taken with a graphite stick. A single strand of rope is shifted multiple times in order to create this image. The rope is the same material used in the installations A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew and InTension.

graphite on paper, 50" x 32.5"

This site specific installation is organized as a sequence of forms: large to small, open to closed, idealized to specific. The hand crocheted construction recalls women's clothing, traditional lace ornaments, Japanese tree wrappings and Brancusi's modernist columns. The smallest construction reveals a scar on a tree facing the adjoining Hospital.

4.5 miles of polypropylene robe

Commissioned by the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont, Burlington Vermont for the show Material Pursuits curated by Evelyn Hankins.
September 4 - December 14, 2007
This project was funded by a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation.

Fleming Material Pursuits website

Article in Seven Days

In this series, copper wire is placed beneath the paper and a rubbing is taken with a graphite stick. The material is shifted at intervals to create multiple impressions and a sense of movement over time.

graphite on paper, 12" x 9" image, 22" x 15" paper

This series of drawings was created by taking rubbings of washers placed beneath the paper. The washers were shifted several times as repeated rubbings were taken. Erasure is also used to create these drawings.

graphite on paper, 12" x 9" image, 22" x 15" paper

Lines are defined by areas of an aquatint plate that are without tone, creating negative spaces that allow the color of a previous aquatint registration to read through. Layering yellow, cyan and magenta plate registration create all the colors seen in this series.

multiplate color aquatint, 4.5" x 9" image on 11" x 15" paper

I am interested in how a work of art can interface with its architectural context to transform or amplify the reading of structure. The gradient pattern emphasizes the heavy loads bearing down on the column from the museum's roof. The net-like materiality of this piece suggests the openwork of a fishnet stocking or a fisherman's net while the choice of black material picks up on the ironwork throughout the courtyard and facade.

polyester rope, 20' x 5' x 5'

Commissioned by the Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont for the State of Craft exhibit.
22 May - 31 October 2010

This projected was supported in part by a grant from the Vermont Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and E Candace Forsythe.

Bennington Museum State of Craft exhibit

These works were created as studies to explore possibilities when designing the highway installation “Luminous Fields: Longitude in Time”. The drawings explore how the physical studies would be experienced from a car driving along a  road. As the eye level of the observer moves from above the reflectors  to a level with the reflectors, a horizontal datum line becomes apparent .

Tunbridge , Vermont. 2000

Suspended works: crocheted yellow polypropylene rope,  stones, pulleys, dimensions variable

Tree based works: crocheted yellow polypropylene rope, dimensions variable