Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds
Built Environments of Vernacular Artists
John Michael Kohler Arts Center
608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan
www.jmkac.org
Through January 6
By Debra Brehmer
Beginning in the late 1950s, Emery Blagdon created a “healing
machine” consisting of hundreds of intricately made mobiles. In
his barn in Nebraska hung a forest of twisted wire, tin foil and
other found objects such as paint can lids. These delicate
hanging assemblages appear both sculptural and magical. The
first person to discover his work was the town’s pharmacist.
After walking into the barn and seeing Blagdon’s environment,
he abandoned his profession and devoted his life to preserving
this work. He was psychically healed.
Blagdon is one of twenty-two artists in the John Michael Kohler
Arts Center’s exhibition, Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds,
on view in Sheboygan through January 6. All of the work in this
exhibition is stunning. So for Blagdon to steal the show is a feat
of grand proportion. We enter the gallery and are subsumed by
a thicket of hanging sculptures, each an innovative twining of
pattern and function, a world that is so totally independently
and innovatively construed that it jars even the most obtuse
visitor.
Each component of the healing machine is part of the larger
whole but also a marvelous independent sculpture in and of
itself. One could say that Blagdon had a design finesse that
allowed him to work within the same stylist mode for year upon
year yet continue to spin new and original compositions. Most
of his pieces have a geometric vocabulary where woven wire
squares and circles create armatures for dangling pieces of
metal and intricately wrapped, layered wax paper, and twisted
forms. It is actually quite difficult to describe Blagdon’s work.
The adjectives that come to mind are graceful, lace-like, lyrical,
ephemeral, brilliant. And these objects are not simply works of
art. They were meant to function. Bladgon was interested in
magnetic fields and electrical currents. He wanted to harness
the unseen magnetic forces that might carry a healing charge.
By the mid 1960s, Blagdon had the barn wired and had enough
machines in place that visitors reported feeling a “tickling in
your hair a tickling like electricity going through you,” as quoted
in the exhibition catalog. Blagdon stopped cutting his hair and
beard at this time. He also began mixing potions and fermenting
substances, like an alchemist.
The pharmacist, Dan Dryden, whom Blagdon bought minerals
from, decided to pay him a visit one day. Quoted in the
exhibition catalog is his response to his first encounter with the
Healing Machine:
“We walked to the back of the shed. Emery unlocked the door,
pulled the door open and we stepped inside. There was not a
great deal of light at that time…but I could see there were
masses of [wire hanging] from the walls and the ceiling...he
reached around a corner, threw on a couple of switches. All the
Christmas tree lights came on. Some were blinking on and off,
reflecting off hundreds and thousands of pieces of copper wire,
tin foil, painted tin can lids…It hit me all at once. This panorama
…looked like a vast panorama…the room looked ten times
larger than it was...juxtapose that with the fact that outside
there are miles and miles of nothing but Sandhills, a few corn
fields, a few cattle, otherwise, absolutely nothing – and here
[was] this whole world, contained within the shed.”
There is definitely something that sets Blagdon’s work apart
from the twenty-one other site builders in the exhibition. All of
the other artists make things that can be recognized as “art.”
Perhaps they don’t always think of themselves as artists, but
they do make sculptures and paintings and objects that we
would mentally group within an art realm. Blagdon’s work
occupies some other place, a juncture between art and science
or sanity and madness perhaps. It clearly speaks from its own
categorical island, which is what gives it such power. One might
compare him to Dr. Evermor in Baraboo, who created the
“Forevertron,” a giant machine made of scrap metal and old
industrial machinery that the artist, Tom Every, says will launch
him into the cosmos upon his death. But Evermor is a tall tale
spinner. His work embodies fiction. Blagdon is dead serious
about his engineering practices.
Beyond the sheer initial marveling over Bladon’s work, what we
ultimately get out of it is akin to his intention: While these works
may no longer carry electrical current and orchestrate contact
with magnetic fields, they do carry a charge. The work lifts us
out of our well-trod state of daily life and takes us to a place of
unlimited potential. Blagdon’s work emits a quality of renewal.
By standing under this gorgeous field of sculpture, the spheres
of the material world, the magical world and the yet uncharted
reaches of the scientific world are securely twined together.
Built Environments of Vernacular Artists
John Michael Kohler Arts Center
608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan
www.jmkac.org
Through January 6
By Debra Brehmer
Beginning in the late 1950s, Emery Blagdon created a “healing
machine” consisting of hundreds of intricately made mobiles. In
his barn in Nebraska hung a forest of twisted wire, tin foil and
other found objects such as paint can lids. These delicate
hanging assemblages appear both sculptural and magical. The
first person to discover his work was the town’s pharmacist.
After walking into the barn and seeing Blagdon’s environment,
he abandoned his profession and devoted his life to preserving
this work. He was psychically healed.
Blagdon is one of twenty-two artists in the John Michael Kohler
Arts Center’s exhibition, Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds,
on view in Sheboygan through January 6. All of the work in this
exhibition is stunning. So for Blagdon to steal the show is a feat
of grand proportion. We enter the gallery and are subsumed by
a thicket of hanging sculptures, each an innovative twining of
pattern and function, a world that is so totally independently
and innovatively construed that it jars even the most obtuse
visitor.
Each component of the healing machine is part of the larger
whole but also a marvelous independent sculpture in and of
itself. One could say that Blagdon had a design finesse that
allowed him to work within the same stylist mode for year upon
year yet continue to spin new and original compositions. Most
of his pieces have a geometric vocabulary where woven wire
squares and circles create armatures for dangling pieces of
metal and intricately wrapped, layered wax paper, and twisted
forms. It is actually quite difficult to describe Blagdon’s work.
The adjectives that come to mind are graceful, lace-like, lyrical,
ephemeral, brilliant. And these objects are not simply works of
art. They were meant to function. Bladgon was interested in
magnetic fields and electrical currents. He wanted to harness
the unseen magnetic forces that might carry a healing charge.
By the mid 1960s, Blagdon had the barn wired and had enough
machines in place that visitors reported feeling a “tickling in
your hair a tickling like electricity going through you,” as quoted
in the exhibition catalog. Blagdon stopped cutting his hair and
beard at this time. He also began mixing potions and fermenting
substances, like an alchemist.
The pharmacist, Dan Dryden, whom Blagdon bought minerals
from, decided to pay him a visit one day. Quoted in the
exhibition catalog is his response to his first encounter with the
Healing Machine:
“We walked to the back of the shed. Emery unlocked the door,
pulled the door open and we stepped inside. There was not a
great deal of light at that time…but I could see there were
masses of [wire hanging] from the walls and the ceiling...he
reached around a corner, threw on a couple of switches. All the
Christmas tree lights came on. Some were blinking on and off,
reflecting off hundreds and thousands of pieces of copper wire,
tin foil, painted tin can lids…It hit me all at once. This panorama
…looked like a vast panorama…the room looked ten times
larger than it was...juxtapose that with the fact that outside
there are miles and miles of nothing but Sandhills, a few corn
fields, a few cattle, otherwise, absolutely nothing – and here
[was] this whole world, contained within the shed.”
There is definitely something that sets Blagdon’s work apart
from the twenty-one other site builders in the exhibition. All of
the other artists make things that can be recognized as “art.”
Perhaps they don’t always think of themselves as artists, but
they do make sculptures and paintings and objects that we
would mentally group within an art realm. Blagdon’s work
occupies some other place, a juncture between art and science
or sanity and madness perhaps. It clearly speaks from its own
categorical island, which is what gives it such power. One might
compare him to Dr. Evermor in Baraboo, who created the
“Forevertron,” a giant machine made of scrap metal and old
industrial machinery that the artist, Tom Every, says will launch
him into the cosmos upon his death. But Evermor is a tall tale
spinner. His work embodies fiction. Blagdon is dead serious
about his engineering practices.
Beyond the sheer initial marveling over Bladon’s work, what we
ultimately get out of it is akin to his intention: While these works
may no longer carry electrical current and orchestrate contact
with magnetic fields, they do carry a charge. The work lifts us
out of our well-trod state of daily life and takes us to a place of
unlimited potential. Blagdon’s work emits a quality of renewal.
By standing under this gorgeous field of sculpture, the spheres
of the material world, the magical world and the yet uncharted
reaches of the scientific world are securely twined together.
Full Moon Edition No. 2 11.24.07
| Copyright 2007 Art History Chicks LLC |
| Images this page are of work by Emery Blagdon. From John Michael Kohler Arts Center, www.jmkac.org |
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