TitleThe Sense of Things #8
Artist
Willard Boepple
(American, b. 1945)
Date2002
MediumCast resin
DimensionsOverall: 32 x 13 x 11 in.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, March 3, 2011
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2011.9
Label TextSculptor, Willard Boepple was born in Bennington, Vermont and studied at Skowhegan, Berkeley, RISD and ultimately received his BFA from City College, New York, in the late 1960s. He is primarily an abstract sculptor whose work comes directly from a modernist lineage. However, unlike the cool remove of high Minimalism, Boepple's two- and three-dimensional vocabulary is primarily rooted in human interaction with the world around us and "The Sense of Things #8," like many of his works, has a vague familiarity of forms. Boepple’s work has been inspired by Bennington-based artists from the mid-1960s Jules Olitiski, Kenneth Noland, and Anthony Caro. Beyond the Bennington connection however, the artist's work fits into a much wider context of modernism. Boepple has said that he is particularly interested in how “forms are determined by the way in which the human body uses them: a drawer pull by the shape of the hand, a stair by the dimension of the foot, a bookshelf but the arm’s reach and so on.”
