Jim Hodges

American, born 1957

© 2005 Jim Hodges

look and see, 2005

Enamel on stainless steel
300 x 138 x 144 inches (762 x 350.5 x 365.8 cm)
Sarah Norton Goodyear, George B. and Jenny R. Mathews and Charles Clifton Funds, 2006

On View in the Sculpture Garden 

The artist says:

"Starting at the beginning it was really through an invitation of Creative Time to respond to a space that they were curating down at the Ritz Carlton Hotel Plaza down at Battery Park in New York. So down there I thought, ok, I want to make something that's monumental, first of all, because it's here in the city, and it's big, and it's the landscape, and it's got the trees, and the bay, and the Statue of Liberty out there on one side, and it's got this huge tower and buildings behind it on the other side, and here’s this plaza, and what do I do with this space? And so the curving of the form, besides being a solution to any kind of pedestal if you will—that the piece holds itself up—also starts this movement that circles into itself and creates space. So it's a stable, physical structure that also creates these kind of zones of experience—that one is in a constant state of movement in and through because of the holes in it. Because of the mirroring, and the holes, and the kind of blending that was occurring in the work it seemed that it was kind of at the perfect edge of the city, at the edge of nature to create a kind of a blending if you will of those two experiences at one time."

"I refer to the work as a painting because the surface is a painting and because it's handmade though there's a perfection that I was aiming at. There's a beautiful, nuanced surface there that is very much a handmade surface. That, to me, is what a painting is about too—that one senses the hand of the artist, even if it's an airbrush."