All throughout Celene Hawkins exhibition ‘Idyll’ is her fascination with frenetic lines and rich textures in natural forms: photos of clusters of branches, dense views of buds, iced twigs and more. Especially noteworthy is Composition IV (2008). It features bronze wire suspended over what appears to be a copper-plated sheet of wood. The bronze wire is twisted and bent haphazardly. The wire floats above this background piece, welded to side supports. The distance allows the shadow cast by the wire to also become part of the composition, making three levels including the background texture. The shadow of the wire depends on the position of the lighting, lending its presence in its ethereality more fragile than the wire. Bronze, a metal of strength, acquires here delicacy, its warm hue balanced by the cool turquoise background patina.
The proportions of the piece, roughly 3’x1.4’, are approximately the Golden Ratio. The Ratio, used by the Greeks in their architecture, is one of the fundamental proportions in the growth of many living organisms (such as a nautilus shell).
Hence in Composition IV there is the paragon of her work here: the full abstraction of natural energies, right to an intuition of the laws of growth.
-A.C. Frabetti
Celene Hawkins. 'Idyll: New Photography and Sculpture by Celene Hawkins' at Prairie, 4035 Hamilton Ave., Cincinnati, OH. Through Dec. 31.
In Photo: Hawkins, Celene. Composition IV (detail), 2008. Bronze wire, wood, patina. AEQAI staff photo.
