Two Artists Combine Visions

3/4's: Senior Brendan Ravenhill and junior Azusa Kakuda used copper, flour, and rock salt in exhibit. (photo by Hans Peterson)

It was a collaborative effort giving birth to 3/4's, a sculptural installation on view in Fisher Hall from Nov. 5-8. The installation, which made use of copper piping and common materials like flour, was the labor of senior Brendan Ravenhill and junior Azusa Kakuda, two students with supposedly little in common artistically. Despite what they claim as a difference in aesthetic, the two successfully invented something that suggests a single mind at work.

"We did share one thing in common which was diligence," said Kakuda, who hails from New York. The two invested much time and effort, not to mention a fair amount of their own resources, to make the piece.

The work was large. It filled most of Fisher, extending almost wall to wall and reaching high above one's head. Three identical rows of copper plumbing emerged horizontally from a point 10 feet from the floor. The rows were angled like the movement of circuitry. At the end of each pipe was a small bronze-colored faucet handle. The faucet heads were poised above three wooden troughs, painted white, that ran along the gallery floor for 32 of its 50 feet. The troughs each housed a different substance: flour, rock salt and a mixture of sugar and powdered milk.

These substances were loose within the trenches and were shifted by the audience during the show. Imprints of fingers, whole hands and cryptic traces of writing were visible as the troughs became sandboxes in which the audience played. The material extended like some a moonscape, becoming gradually warmer and colder with the progressive difference in spot lighting.

The bed of rock crystal was a nice touch. It glistened and sparkled, yet had that flat, smoky characteristic of salt. There was, however, little visual distance between the flour and powdered-milk/sugar mixtures, to the extent that one wondered why different materials were used.

Ravenhill explained that he chose the materials because of their meaning relative to water. Salt, flour and sugary milk powder, when mixed with water, suggest, respectively, saltwater, bread and mother's milk. There is something sacred about these materials and this implication was clear to the viewer. However, the water was conspicuously absent. One stood there waiting for the pipes to start dripping but nothing happened.

Ravenhill and Kakuda said that technical problems prevented the inclusion of water, along with the fact that they liked the piece as it was. The absence of water worked. It frustrated the viewer and built a kind of suspended potential, strangely distinct from the quiet hum of the structure.

Without needing to touch the sculpture, one felt the durability of the metal piping. This established a kind of intuitive resistance contrasting with the soft, giving quality of the material resting on the floor. It was a subtle difference though, because one made an instant visual connection between the slenderness of the troughs and the narrow diameter of the pipeline. Overall, the work appeared as three beautifully clean lines through space. It was as if some carefully drawn blueprint got up off the page and began to stretch. The meditative quality of these lines was intensified by the raked texture of the dry troughs, which strongly implied a zen garden.

The major problem was that the work demanded a more pristine environment. This was not the fault of the artists, however, who were aware that the viewer's eye became distracted by the busy network of lighting and sound equipment in Fisher. When you imagined it housed in a space as large as Fisher but devoid of its accessories, the piece became more overwhelming and sleek. Mentally placing one's body within that space was not very hard to do and it was worth it to see oneself more easily consumed by the scale of the work.