Selected Images
Table of Contents
Imagining the Future"Artist's Statement" in the catalogue of Art-In-Science VII sums up the history of this venture (abbreviated):
My fascination with the dynamics of tension began in l969, when Paul Smith, then Director of the American Craft Museum in New York, upon seeing a plaster model in my studio, conceived of an exhibit "Contemplative Environments," wherein walk-in spaces were to be designed by artists. The curved walls depicted in the model in my studio, could be replicated by fabricating a ribbed ship-like frame covered with a pliable material. I was handling a sample of a stretchable nylon knit when it occurred to me that a fabric that stretches should not be stretched over a frame but between points of attachment, allowing the membrane to curve as it may. That night I cut up my husband's undershirt and stretched the knit from a round plywood disk to a square base with a post inserted between them. A similar shape was designed for the exhibit where a commercially available nylon fabric was stretched between frames placed on the museum's floor & ceiling.
Determined to do away with the 90 degree angle in my studio, in 1971 I built the Live-in-Environment. The attention it received generated invitations and commissions, and during installations I marveled with what ease fabric membranes create curvilinear enclosures. At the time I was also working with bricks (see Biographical Data), and knew that to replicate such curved surfaces and spatial flows with traditional building methods called for elaborate preparations--pre-shaped plywood molds which, after the poured concrete hardened, were discarded. Such a double expenditure of time, labor, and materials contrasted dramatically with the economy of effort and expense with which an elastic membrane formed curvilinear surfaces. This made me wonder whether membranes could be used as an internal guide to building solid curved walls (see Hardened Membrane Walls). Learning that materials adaptable to that purpose were used in industries unrelated to housing, in my imagination I began to build shell dwellings (see Imagining the Future).
During my stay at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science (see Art-in-Science 1, l977) I had the opportunity to explore the "what-ifs" that crossed the mind during installations. The investigation produced self-enclosing shells, while the NEA Fellowship (see NEA Project l983) enabled me to take it a step further--explore what happens when an established cutting pattern is enlarged geometrically. The resulting grotesque shapes were an indication that I was grappling with the principles of similitude first described by Galileo. According to these principles the proportions of volumes expanding through growth increase in response to the pull of gravity. Thus when enlarging cutting patterns, one other set of natural laws had to be taken into consideration.
During both periods of experimentation, in l977 and l983, I was preoccupied with the dynamics of tensile structures and paid little attention to esthetics. Whenever a curve extended with the grace of a sweeping gesture, or a shape unfolded with exuberance, it was evident that tension was fluid, as it is in nature. Being a force, tension can not possibly err, thus whenever a shape or curve failed to meet my expectations, it was I who failed to meet the basic requirements. Throughout this venture a feeling prevailed that I was tickling nature, as it were, and it never failed to respond or instruct me.
--Aleksandra Kasuba, 1989
Visit also www.kasubaworks.com