Tuesday, July 22, 7:30 p.m.
Fine Arts Theatre, 36 Biltmore Ave
$8 for BMCM+AC members + students with ID / $10 non-members
Co-sponsored by the Asheville Public Art Board with additional support from Kenn Kotara and Marya Roland
Advance tickets available at BMCM+AC (56 Broadway, downtown Asheville). Call 828-350-8484 for more info.
The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the Asheville Public Art Board are honored to bring an important and influential contemporary artist to Asheville on Tuesday July 22nd. Kenneth Snelson is a major American sculptor with work in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., museums in Holland, Australia, Japan and Germany and public art commissions all over the world.
Ken Snelson also was a student at Black Mountain College in the summers of 1948 and 1949. There may have been no place on Earth more interesting than the Black Mountain College campus during the summer of 1948.
It was Buckminster Fuller’s first summer teaching there. Other faculty included painter Willem de Kooning, composer John Cage and dancer Merce Cunningham. Bucky Fuller was determined to build his first full-size geodesic dome and, through the force of his charisma and enthusiasm, recruited the entire campus to help. Ultimately the dome did not rise (and was thus called the “Supine Dome”), but his ideas took root in the mind of Ken Snelson who ended up inventing the concept that became known as “Tensegrity”. This principle refers to a synergetic relationship between tension and compression, a state of balance achieved between “push” and “pull”. Ken Snelson has devoted his life as a sculptor to exploring different manifestations of Tensegrity, for example with the 60 foot tall Needle Tower at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
In his presentation at the Fine Arts Theatre, Kenneth Snelson will discuss his days as an art student during this unique period in the history of Black Mountain College, 1948-49, and especially the important influence of professors Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller on his life and work. He will present visuals of his sculptures, panoramic photography and a multi-media, open-ended, artwork he calls a “Portrait of an Atom”. He will also discuss the nature of structure and “Tensegrity”.
